Description
Book SynopsisFinalist for the National Book Award in Fiction
Winner of
The Paris Review's Terry Southern Prize for Humor
"Chris Bachelder is a witty, compassionate troublemaker, and we need more like him." —George Saunders
Trade Review"Wistful and elegantly written…
The Throwback Special conjures the rewarding melancholy of Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe novels." -- John Williams - New York Times Book Review
"Powerful, intelligent, and entertaining…Bachelder works a kind of poignant comedic magic, expertly locating and drawing out central truths about life." -- Drew Nellins Smith - Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A hilariously sorrowful rendering of American masculinity." -- Weston Cutter - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"A gem…Bachelder’s ‘football’ novel is an eerie, witty work dissecting a modern-day sacrificial ritual." -- Matt Seidel - The Millions
"[Bachelder] excels as an analyst of the anxieties that undergird social mores." -- Miranda Popkey - The New Yorker
"Bachelder’s quirky, defiant style…achieves something fresh and surprising." -- Chris Tucker - Dallas Morning News
"[
The Throwback Special] is not about football. But about relationships and all that go with them: trust, mistrust, joy, sadness, elation, heartbreak and more." -- Vic Fleming - Memphis Daily News
"A hilarious literary novel about our least hilarious—and least literary—national pastime. No one who reads it will ever be able to think about football, Joe Theismann, Lawrence Taylor, or indeed the male psyche in quite the same way again." -- Tom Bissell, author of Apostle
"A comic meditation about marriage, ritual, friendship, parenthood, aging, and unlikely obsessions,
The Throwback Special is a funny, insightful, and surprisingly poignant book." -- Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members
"What a brilliant book!" -- Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang
