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Bringing a written story to the big screen is always a challenging task. Director and screenwriter(s) try to be true to the original story while retelling it in a very different format. The slower flow of words and story spread over many pages and many hours is dramatically different than the faster pace of a 'moving picture'.

I know too well the American neo-folktale (confused farmer carves baseball field into cornfield on his Iowa farm) told in this story. Far too many viewings of the film Field of Dreams have burned the character of Ray Kinsella as inhabited by Kevin Costner into my mind.


The roots of Field of Dreams are in the words and story of Shoeless Joe. But the novel is a fuller and more populated story, evolving over a much longer time frame.

Ray Kinsella is still a novice farmer who hears a voice. "The voice was that of a baseball announcer." Ray knows immediately he must build a baseball field for Shoeless Joe Jackson. He does just that, as crazy an act here as in the film.

The overall story of the book is familiar to many. Build a baseball field; road trip to Boston and then Chisholm, Minnesota; a young hitchhiker named 'Moonlight' Graham; financial troubles for the farm; all these key characters and events are present.

Other characters and story arcs are 'new'. Twin brother Richard Kinsella and his lady-friend Gypsy, a carnival, the farm mortgage held by the oldest living Chicago Cub ...or is he..??


A NY Times Book Review blurb on the cover calls the book "a lyrical, seductive, and all-together winning concoction."

Well, if you enjoy lines like this:
"I sit and watch two lemon-lines of moonlight that knife across the floor like laser beams."

or:
"A breath of clover travels on the summer wind. Behind me, just yards away, brook water plashes (sic) softly in the darkness, a frog shrills, fireflies dazzle the night like red pepper. A petal falls."

...if you enjoy too many 'lyrical' passages like that, this is your book.


Author Kinsella also has the annoying habit of running present time and 'flash back' time together over the same pages. It is just a wee bit confusing and gets old over the course of the story.


The Bottom Line
If you are familiar with the magical realism story of Ray Kinsella as told in the film Field of Dreams you likely will not be able to approach this novel with an open mind. Which is OK, because Shoeless Joe is too flowery, too unfocused, and too 'cluttered' to be recommended over the film.

If you have not seen the film I would tepidly recommend Shoeless Joe ...if only to watch the film afterward to see if you agree with my thought it is a much better telling of 'crazy' Ray Kinsella and the baseball field he was compelled to build.


Certified 'lean-n-mean' review.
 

Recommended: No