Title: Sad Beyond The Story
Review: This is the kind of book that with a better writer may have had a chance. Instead, it's just another poorly executed story by a writer without a lot of talent. The story of the loser son, his fighting and uneducated parents and the tenuous baseball connection around which its story is hatched rings hollow and is perhaps only sightly more compelling reading than the minutes from a local school board meeting. None of the characters are well developed, the story is tired, the stakes are low. I struggled to finish this book and probably only did so because every now and then Jones would break from his formulaic characterizations and predictable plot for a quick flourish of imagination and inspiration. The Elements of Hitting is sad as a story and as a book. It takes a depressing story, which in better hands should have been interesting, and leaves it stranded at first base while the writer strikes out without so much as taking a good swing. And that's sad.
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