Summerland

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Perhaps one of my most favourite things in the world (regarding literature at least) is the fact that it inspires and spawns great people who take the building blocks of a genre and then remould them, just that little bit, so as to create something entirely fresh and new. I recently had a great experience of this, having just finished Michael Chabon’s Summerland.

This funky fantasy novel tells the story of young Ethan Feld, the worst baseball player on Clam Island, who suddenly gets thrown into the ultimate ball game of his life when his father is kidnapped by an evil Changer who plans to destroy all of existence. Along with his friends Jennifer T. and Thor, Ethan must travel through the magical worlds that run parallel to his own, put a team together, and discover the true point of baseball in order to save the worlds. 

We’ve got werewolves, wererats, werefoxes, giants, and ferishers (fairies), as well as a whole bunch of original creatures and horrors unique to the captivating world that Chabon creates within the pages of this book. What I most loved about this novel is how it begins with a very clear and established fantasy adventure, but then a few things get twisted around to make the story completely Chabon's own. While the central adventure focuses solely on the children (funnily enough at the ‘age of not believing’ as Angela Lansbury would say) and their becoming heroes, the story also holds a pivotal role for the grown up/authoritarian figure, making the book itself enjoyable for a greater range of ages in its audience.

Image credit: Amazon

While fantasy and baseball seem like a strange blend, Chabon works it well with a narrator’s voice that is metafictive and breaks the fourth wall, making it both a mode of storytelling (or commentating more often than not) as well as a character in its own right. The tone of the book is clever and quirky, as well as having all the recognisable bells and whistles of traditional fantasy, with Chabon’s blending of European and Native American mythology working surprisingly well in creating this amazing, fantastical world that is both recognisable and delightfully foreign.

It’s a wonderful read.

Summerland was written by Michael Chabon in 2002 and published in America by Mirimax Books. It was published in Great Britain by HarperCollins.