The Essential W.P. Kinsella is made up of 27 stories in celebration of the 80th birthday of author W.P. Kinsella. There are several sports stories in the book – from the miracle of Istanbul to the Old Trafford brawl – as well as several others. W.P. inspired the movie Field of Dreams!
There is a lot of great short works in this book and I enjoyed reading it and enjoyed W.P’s writing style. I didn’t realize that W.P. had stopped writing for a while – he was struck by a car in 1997 and had brain damage and didn’t end up writing again until 2011!
If you like to read about sports I am sure that you will enjoy this book of works. And there’s some non-sports related stories in there too for everyone else 😉
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
This career retrospective celebrates the 80th birthday of baseball’s greatest scribe, W. P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe), as well as the 25th anniversary of Field of Dreams, the film that he inspired.
In addition to his classic baseball tales, W. P. Kinsella is also a critically-acclaimed short fiction writer. His satiric wit has been celebrated with numerous honors, including the Order of British Columbia.
Here are his notorious First Nation narratives of indigenous Canadians, and a literary homage to J. D. Salinger. Alongside the “real” story of the 1951 Giants and the afterlife of Roberto Clemente, are the legends of a pirated radio station and a hockey game rigged by tribal magic.
Eclectic, dark, and comedic by turns, The Essential W. P. Kinsella is a living tribute to an extraordinary raconteur.