Balls: A Novel - Softcover

Kincaid, Nanci

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385334532 ISBN 13: 9780385334532

Publisher: Delta, 1999

Synopsis

Dixie's in love with Mac. Mac is in love with football. And football, as every red-blooded Southern man and woman knows, is the most jealous mistress of all....In Nanci Kincaid's stunning new novel, the rise and fall of a big-time college football coach is chronicled by the women in his life: his pretty, easily underestimated wife, his hot-tempered daughter, his God-fearing mother, and an unforgettable cast of players' girlfriends and other men's wives. And while Mac's fortunes are tied to the sport he loves, his women are busy making choices and plans of their own. Until the game on the field, with all its heroic feats, tragic twists, and roaring crowds, is overshadowed by the game played behind closed doors: where a good man risks losing a good woman to the call of her own heart.

About this title

Review

If you link your happiness to the whims of a game, the odds of ever feeling truly satisfied are slim to none. In Balls, Nanci Kincaid reveals the misguided hopes and unfulfilled dreams of women trapped in lives that spiral around the coaches and players of Southern college football. She also exposes a darker side of the sport, where sexist attitudes, racism, and ignorance run as strong and deep as a receiver on a post pattern.

Kincaid creates a large cast of interesting women by switching point of view from one chapter to the next. Her exacting dialogue allows half-joking responses, subtle revelations, and layers of unspoken subtext to shape each character. What happens when the smart, beautiful, rich homecoming princess succumbs to the passion of backseat love and marries the poor star quarterback? Pretty much what you'd expect. "Sometimes I tried to believe the ball was love, truth, or beauty so that I could look at the game, and the men playing it, differently, as if it ... would make the life I was living something worth devoting myself to." But Kincaid has devised a trick play, using stereotype as a trap to lure the reader into an intriguing study of the frailties of human behavior, the restraints on women in a male-dominated culture, and the fascinating ways people change over time as age and experience join to forge wisdom. --George Laney

From the Back Cover

"Kincaid is a master of nuance and timing....Balls is a defining Southern book....Read it, laugh, and file it on your shelf right next to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."
--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"[A] carefully constructed second novel...Kincaid cleverly mines the small moments."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Fine, funny, poignant...Listening to the women of Balls, we're drawn irresistibly into their sometimes wise-cracking, sometimes heartbreaking talk about the realm they inhabit."
--The Sacramento Bee

"What makes the tale fun is that Kincaid tells it through the eyes of the women in Mac's life...great Southern details...characters so believable you can hear them drawl."
--People

About this edition

• Publisher: Delta
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0385334532
• ISBN 13: 9780385334532
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 412