I don`t know ...i can`t put my finger on it. But i just did not enjoy this one.
It sounded interesting and at the start it was, but it just... fell.. flat.

I put off reading this book for so long because I never saw anyone talking about it on bookstagram, and that's never a good sign. It turns out I was absolutely right. This book was terrible. It made no sense. I slogged through this, wishing I wasn't so stubborn and didn't think DNF'ing a book was wrong. The book was awful. It felt like a gigantic waste of time. I wish I had just skipped it. The characters were awful. The plot made no sense. Everything was so jumbled. I found myself questioning how this actually got published in the first place..

The cover OBVIOUSLY catches your attention and then the emotional insides, much like Marilyn Monroe, are complex, dark, and yet beautiful. This is one of those books you find yourself returning to and rereading because you can’t get it out of your head. The writing is so incredible that you owe it to yourself to read this book. Trust me. Stop reading this review and go get this book.

This book has 2 main characters living different aspects of life! This will keep your attention and make you laugh a little! I found the story line a little hard to follow but over all was a good read!

I have been struggling with writing a review ever since I started reading this ARC. The reason I requested it was because the cover drew me in and after reading the blurb I thought to myself “This can either go really well, or end in a disaster.”

I was hoping for the first. I was hoping for a sensitive approach and exploration of gender, identity and queer love in a historical context. I was hoping for nuance and empathy and respect. What I got was… not that. Which is why I didn’t fill out the usual tags at the top of the review. I can’t do it, because I’m not sure what the author was telling me here and how to interpret it.

I’m going to use a lot of spoilers from here on out to explain what I mean, so if you want to read this book without getting spoiled about major plot points, go forth and click away from this review. Otherwise let me explain what my issue was.

At the end of the book I was skimming more than reading because I couldn’t take where the story was going. Part of that was that I couldn’t figure out what the author was trying to do here. There was an incredible amount of violence in this book that in large parts felt like plot devices rather than part of the story itself. One example is what happens to Clyde/Marilyn from early age to the end of the book.

Look, there is writing tragic and heartbreaking stories featuring queer characters and then there is writing violent stories featuring queer characters in which the violence is presented as the origin of queerness. In this particular book it felt like the several kinds of violence Clyde/Marilyn has to endure from CSA to parental abuse, and violence stacked upon violence results in Clyde finding a way to get away from it by slipping into the role of Marilyn. As a coping mechanism. Their queerness is presented as a direct result of being unable to deal with childhood trauma, as a persona Clyde takes on to cope, rather than their genderqueerness being part of their identity. And I can’t even tell you if they were meant to be read as a nonbinary character, as a trans woman, as a gay man coping with trauma by “pretending” to be a woman, as a genderqueer character, or as a mentally ill person unable to cope with trauma in other ways than believing they are a reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.

And to top it all of, at the end Clyde “goes back” to being a cis man and doesn’t think he is the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe anymore after he got revenge, tried to rob a bank to get GCS (I… yeah), got caught, lost his partner and is imprisoned, where he suddenly is able to do some martial arts moves to fight people threatening him. (I will get to that later.) But… Whatever the intention of the author was, however I was supposed to read this story arc of Clyde/Marilyn, the end result was this: To me it read like the basis of this story arc was Clyde was abused as a child, the trauma response was to get fixated on the idea that he is the reincarnation of Marilyn, his queerness was a result of that, and as soon as he got his revenge and got violent himself in self-defense - in prison - the trauma response ceased to exist and so did his queerness and his questioning of the gender he was assigned at birth. In a really twisted way you could even read this as a “cure the trans person because this is mental illness” story. I can’t even tell you what that did to me.

I hated it. I hated every part of it and couldn’t get over how the whole story was presented. The rest of the book kind of… passed me by in a haze of confusion and disdain. There were a couple of things that rubbed me the wrong way, like the total omission of the context of the war Raphael was witnessing while in Israel, or the fact that Clyde’s Japanese mother was portrayed as a plastic stereotype of a Japanese woman who even gets insulted for using Japanese pet names for her child. Also, I do not think I have to explain why my head exploded when a Japanese-American boy who played baseball and never had any martial arts or self-defense training whatsoever, and was never portrayed a someone who knows how to physically fight, then suddenly has a martial arts kickass fest in prison and knocks all his opponents out as if he’s never done anything else in his life.

I just. I don’t know what the author wanted to do. I don’t know if other people will read this books in a completely different way. But the way I read it left me sick and tired and angry. I didn’t like it. I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t even want to finish it. I only did because I got the ARc from Netgalley and felt like I had to get through this. But yeah. I hated it. I won’t recommend this to anyone, honestly. I just never want to think about it ever again.

2.5 stars

I was immediately attracted to this book because of it's stunning cover and after reading the synopsis, I was intrigued enough to request the title to read. What I got was vastly different to anything to what I anticipated and after finishing this book one day ago, I'm still at quite a loss as to how to review it. If there's one thing that's for sure is that this book really needs to have content warnings for readers at the start because this covers some very dark and emotionally wrought topics that readers may find distasteful (abuse--physical, emotional, mental, sexual assault, incest, violence, homophobia/transphobia).

If you're looking for a happy book or a book where lessons are learned after trying times, this is not it. There was no happiness or resolution for any character in this book and it was to be honest, fairly depressing. What really has me scratching my head about this book is its purpose -- what was the author trying to say? What was the author trying to communicate?

The story was separated into four parts. First we're introduced to Kimitake Koba, or Clyde or as he believes he is Marilyn Monroe. He's a young American-Japanese boy who lives with a submissive mother who doesn't speak English and an alcoholic and physically abusive father. Soon after we're introduced to Raphael Dweck, or Ralph. He's smart, a talented artist and is also deeply religious, but ever since moving to America, he has been troubled and develops kleptomaniac tendencies, which leads him to a great deal of trouble. Much of the story focuses on his time in Israel, when he is sent back after undergoing therapy for his kleptomania. The story then comes back to America when Clyde and Ralph officially meet, and the consequences of the actions during their time together.

I have to say that there's something about Ortega-Medina's prose that, while fairly straightforward, is quite beautiful. The descriptive writing was not only what kept my attention hooked but it is also what made it so difficult to put it down for sleep and work. I enjoyed the exploration of religion, as well as the rich Jewish culture that the author explored and Jewish traditions that I never knew before. It's not often that I've read a book with a young adult where religion played such a big and defining role in their life, so that to me was also a refreshing take. That said there was more about this book that troubled me.

Both characters and their life stories are incredibly complex. Their youth is filled with harrowing experiences that involve much physical, mental and emotional abuse, which made this a very dark read. One topic that kept coming back in both their lives was incest; both boys developed semi-sexual relationships with their cousins and I did not understand why those relationships were necessary to the story. I understand their need to feel love and acceptance and getting those from their cousins, but there was no need for the relationship to turn sexual--not to mention the fact that it became sexual almost instantaneously.

I didn't particularly like both Clyde or Ralph, but despite Ralph being an incredibly self-serving asshole, he was actually the one that I felt the most sympathy for. His struggle to understand who he is and what his true purpose was against the expectations of his family and religion was very real. That's not to say that I really liked his character or the things that he did because he treated everyone in his life like they were disposable and was nothing but selfish, especially in moments when he could've been doing good. On the other hand, Clyde was portrayed as manic and it seemed to stem from his belief that he was Marilyn Monroe, and this is where I found how the author depicted Clyde as distasteful.

From the very beginning, you can sense that Clyde does not identify as a 'he' but because he believed he was Marilyn Monroe's spirit, that he was a 'she'. Yet throughout the latter half of the story, the author continues to identify Clyde as 'he', even when Clyde has fully embraced being Marilyn Monroe. This is also the point where the story really devolves for me because it seemed that the author was likening being transgender as being someone with a mental illness and that didn't sit right with me. As Clyde became more desperate to physically become a woman, the story not only became frenzied, but Clyde's character unravelled, leading to the tossing aside of their transgender identity for one of a mentally ill young man that took his obsession with a dead celebrity too far.

Another theme that is often repeated is how everything comes back around and although I can see how the author was trying to do that with the ending of the story, I felt that it was not only very rushed, but too outlandish and completely unbelievable. Which brings me back to the question I asked at the start: what was the author trying to say? Because I'm really not sure I understand what the purpose of all the character's suffering was. It also makes me wonder how 'The Death of Baseball' is a fitting title when it only played a very minor role at the start and end of the story. Overall, while the author was able to elicit a wide range of overwhelming emotions from me while reading this, I'm not really sure that I would recommend it to anyone for the reasons stated above.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A fun read - Sometimes a little bit too quirky at times, but the characters were interesting and the plot definitely hooked me.

This is a really tricky review for me to write, purely because I haven't made my mind up about this book yet. I guess I'll try and work it out as I write this review. I will say it took me a long time to read, I just never wanted to pick it up.
The story begins with Clyde, a young boy who is in a horrendous situation, living with his abusive father. As a reader, you can't help feel for Clyde. It's also now, that he begins to feel different, and starts experimenting with his cousin. They way it's written from Clyde's perspective make this first section of the book really emotive. But I never really go into it. I didn't feel the incest was necessary.
Then we move onto Raphael, who after causing a lot of trouble, is being sent back to Jerusalem to live with his Aunt. I have to say, Raphael isn't very likeable at all, so I wasn't really invested in what happened to him. He again, fell in love with his cousin! A running theme this book didn't need!
However, I have to be honest and say I was interested to see how these characters would connect. It was a little cliched how they met. And for me, the story just got a bit silly. This is when it really lost me. The whole story lost its realness.
Also, when they connect Clyde now identifies as Marilyn Monroe, Clyde believes they became connected because Marilyn died at the exact moment Clyde was born. Through out the book the author called Marilyn 'he' and I wasn't sure why. I wasn't sure if it's to highlight Clyde's mental health issues, because at the end Clyde goes onto use his Chinese birth name. But it was just strange.
In all honesty I have to admit that I wonder if I missed the point of this book.
I don't think I'd recommend this book. While I wanted to finish it to see what happened, I didn't connect to the characters, the romance, the story. It was miss for me. I guess I made up my mind.
Thanks to Netgalley and Cloud Lodge books for gifting me with a copy of this book in return for an honest, unbiased review. It's out November 19th.

This book took me on a ride! Just when I thought I knew where it was going it veered off in another direction. The stories of Clyde and Raphael hooked me; I felt all their pain and joy and struggle. I especially enjoyed that the "coming out/coming of age" portions of the story were set in worlds not typically explored in the coming out genre (a Japanese-American household, an Israeli-American family, and small town Israel). Some of the over-the-top things that happen in the third act felt a little much and a little "kill your gays," but the characters had also been through so much in their life that extreme actions could be motivated. Overall, I do recommend it and look forward to this author's next work.

The short version I can give you is that this book is amazing. Our main character believes he is the embodiment of the late Marilyn Monroe and honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. His family sends him packing "back" to Israel, I'm pretty sure, to wash the gay out of him (SPOILER: it doesn't work) and hilarity, self reflection and amusing interactions ensues. The Death of Baseball had me howling at times, from being beyond perfect. And even though the main character was annoying with teenage angst and attitude, I found myself loving him immensely.

The Death of Baseball comes out 11.19.19.

4/5 Stars

Thank you Netgalley and Publishers for granting me early access to "The Death Of Baseball".

I'm currently in the middle of a major move, and will definitely come back at a later time and write out a full review and rating.

Thank you so much!

I disliked this book from the start. It reinforces gay stereotypes in my opinion. I didn’t feel invested in the story at all.

A compelling novel about the early and late lives of two queer men, about abuse and abusing, about trauma and toxic masculinity. Intense and real and wrenching, this is a meditation on parent-child relationships, families, and desire in many forms. CW for violence.

Intriguing, dark and powerful storytelling at its best! In my top five (if not THE favorite) books I've read this year. Orlando Ortega-Medina brings to life two fascinating and unique characters and then fuses them together in a plot that takes you on an unexpected wild ride. I'm crossing my fingers that one of Hollywood's adventurous directors will bring this to the big screen. An outstanding book that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thought- provoking, entertaining, shocking and amazing. From the moment I started the book I knew it was going to be great. It had a huge impact on me. Everyone needs to read it.

::I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the opportunity to read your work!::


This week I read #TheDeathOfBaseball by #OrlandoOrtegaMedina . I must say that I absolutely requested to read this book based on the cover alone. It promised something unique, and boy did it deliver. Now to the book...this novel is broken in several parts, and begins like a coming of age story for Japanese American boy named Clyde. Clyde was born August 5th, 1962 which is the same day Marilyn Monroe died. Clyde believes he is the reincarnation of Marilyn as he starts to navigate adolescence and his burgeoning sexuality. In the next section we meet a young Jewish boy named Raphael, who is a kleptomanic with a desire to be deeply religious. Raphael's scenes in Israel were so beautifully written. I've never been, but I felt as though I could see desert landscape. We follow each of their stories separately until the two meet up as adults and chaos seems to propel the reader to the finish. I think the author is dabbling in some interesting ideas when the characters face several crises of faith. One thing I'm not sure about in this book was the depiction of a possibly trans person being mentally ill. Now, I am not informed enough to speak with clarity or authority on trans issues, but at first Clyde seems to embrace this idea of reincarnation and lives as Marilyn, then later it seems as though being Marilyn is an unhinged part of his fractured self. And even later still, the identity of Marilyn is discarded or purged. Like I said, I'm not sure exactly what's going on there, but it made me take pause and consider if this was a fair depiction of someone struggling with identity. And I'd like to mention a few caution warnings..there's violence, sexual assault, coercion, and as children there are some sexual exploration scenes.

I read the first few chapters and decided not to continue because the content was too much for me. I think the characters are strong, though. Thank you for the ARC.

When I was in high school, I accidentally took AP Literature (or the Israeli version of that) and was subjected to 10 months of reading and talking about coming of age novels. This is a long story in of itself but I will say this. If this book was in Hebrew, I would not hesitate to recommend it to my high school Literature teacher.

And I can see how much he'd love it, how he'd assign a comparison of Ralph and Clyde/Marilyn, how he'd talk about the symbolism of the sex change (vs what happened with Clyde/ Marilyn and the attackers) and the blowjobs and how he'd marvel about sexuality being shameful and society excluding people, therapists as sexual predators, names packing so much power (because Clyde/ Marilyn/ Kimitake is the same person but such different faucets and Ralph vs Raphael), Judaism as a method of masochism.

And really, this book is fantastic. It's a specific style, it's like you'd take Perks of Being a Wallflower and mush it together with Sociopaths In Love. I truly feel like it was well-executed. I feel this book has potential to become really popular.

So this book has roughly three parts. In the first, we meet Clyde/Marilyn, a Japanese-American teen that has a really shitty life (to say the least). We follow along as he begins to believe he is Marilyn Monroe reincarnated. In the second part (my favorite), we meet Ralph, an arrogant kleptomaniac Jewish teen whose parents send to Israel in an attempt to "fix" his behavior. We essentially observe his life going downhill. And then, the third part focuses on them meeting as adults.

This book has some clear strengths, the writing being the first. It is phenomenal. It sucked me in from the get-go, I thought I'd read this on my flight and instead, I finished it all today because I couldn't stop reading it, especially the second part. I am still so into it and really impressed by how good it was.

The characterization is great as well.. I can picture all of the characters so well, I feel like I know exactly who they are and what makes them tick. It's really impressively done. I honestly am so impressed by how whole of a picture we get about these two people.

The plot is a little odd but works. There are a few huge reveals here but somehow, they don't reach the impact I'd assume they should. This isn't any real problem because those reveals weren't that important. I mean, as a reader, I was way more invested in the characters than the plot.

The LGBT+ community makes an appearance in this book but I don't know if I can say that it's a positive one. Every time a man has a relationship with another man, it's incest and that's really problematic. However, in defense of this book, the relationships of straight couples here are not much better, be it Clyde/ Marilyn's parents or the whole Joanie Ralph thing. And yeah, not all gay couples are incestuous just as not all parents are failures (which this book also essentially claims). It's annoying that all of the men here don't embrace their sexuality but I guess that's to be expected in the 70s.

However, queerness in this book is far more interesting. The author makes a choice to refer to Clyde/ Marilyn as Clyde and to use he/him pronouns, even when the character expresses numerous times that that's not right. This is a decision that brings to light a lot of questions, it makes me feel like Clyde/Marilyn was just mentally unstable Clyde. As someone who's very invested in queer communities, I really live by the idea that we must respect however a person wishes to be referred to and so it was weird to see the author never ever refer to their own character's the way they'd like.

That said, I don't want to compare Clyde/ Marilyn to the trans community because the character in this book seems to want to transition as a way to escape their identity, to not be a Japanese man. Trans folks are genuinely being themselves and yeah, trans people don't assume they're a historical figure. So I appreciate that the author didn't draw the parallel that they could have but still, it's there, it's there when they attempt to rob a bank for a sex change (is this a reference to John Wojtowicz because yes). So anyways, no, Clyde/ Marilyn is not trans, they're mentally unstable and must not be seen as an example of a trans person.

In any case, this book shows such a messed up world. I finished it yesterday and I'm still constantly thinking about it, thinking about how young Ralph was when he met Joanie and how Yom Kippur's war messed everyone up, how powerful Ralph is, how Jewishly solid this book is (Ahh, there's a part where Ralph talks about coming back and man, that's such a strong Jewish concept, I love that). I really recommend this book!

<b> What I'm Taking With Me </b>
- Two strong characters is more than enough to make a book compelling.
- Raphael is such a great character, he deserved a better life.
- Bad stuff always happens in Mitzpeh Ramon, that is known.

I first encountered the work of Orlando Ortega-Medina through his brilliant, emotionally charged and meditative short story collection Jerusalem Ablaze etched into my memory as one of the trickiest reviews I have ever had to write. Now having read Ortega-Medina’s full length novel, The Death of Baseball I feel that my reviewing skills will be put to the test once again, as I try and communicate to you all how necessary, heartfelt, thought-provoking and sublimely perfect this book is. Oh yes. I did say perfect…

When I began reading this book, I somewhat intuitively avoided reading the full synopsis, as I had a vibe from the outset, that I very much just wanted to be taken wherever this book wished to take me. Aside from the sway of the beautifully retro cover, I felt from a very early stage of reading that this was a book that would consume me completely, and consequently this was one of the rare occasions where this was the only book I was reading at the time. I think this was also influenced by the fact that Ortega-Medina’s two main protagonists, Raphael, and Marilyn are so singularly deserving of the reader’s full attention, as the drama, tragedy, and human frailty plays out against a backdrop of changing decades and social mores, America and Israel, conflict and peace, and the underlying need of both to form a lasting emotional connection. I am only going to give you a silhouette of the characters and the plot, as I think this is a book that needs to be discovered in an almost neutral vacuum, to fully appreciate its emotional depth, and to open yourself up to some extremely accomplished and sublime storytelling.

To say that these characters’ lives are troubled and tempestuous would be an understatement, and as the author highlights the crisis of conscience, faith and loyalty, he weighs them down with, I can guarantee you will be held completely in their thrall. I can honestly say that I did have a sustained emotional response to this book, which is incredibly unusual, as books rarely achieve this for me. I think the emotional heft, moments of extreme poignancy, frustration and anger that we bear witness to in the lives of these characters, is so beautifully realised and communicated that you do become completely immersed in the powerful positivity and destructing negativity, that Raphael and Marilyn seem to take it in turns to display. These conflicting traits lead on occasion to impetuous, ill-judged acts, tempered by moments of extreme tenderness and self realisation as they battle with issues of faith, identity and the instances of wretched tragedy that blight their lives. However, despite the incredibly visceral humanity of this book, I did feel that a certain sense of equanimity was achieved in the life of one character, and that their struggle for acceptance and recognition did come to fruition, which lifted the book to a more life affirming plain.

Tied up with the superlative characterisation of Raphael, Marilyn and the social, religious and familial crisis they suffer, I would also draw attention to two other strengths of the narrative of this book. One is location and period detail, firmly rooting us in the changing decades from the 60s through the 80s, and the way that Ortega-Medina subtly places us in the grip of each decade, using the recognisable markers of each decade, and certain tumultuous events both in America and Israel. The section of the book set in Israel was particularly compulsive reading, as Ortega-Medina places Raphael in a largely unfamiliar setting, under pressure with the weight of certain aspects of his family history, clinging to his faith, pushing the boundaries of his sexuality, and tentatively feeling his way to love. The threat of war with Egypt plays out in the background, and this sojourn in Israel also provides an incredibly interesting reappraisal and exploration of Raphael’s faith, and the seismic effect on his own character that events in Israel cause.

When I’ve been talking about this book to friends and colleagues, another aspect I keep drawing attention to is the sheer cleverness of the structure. Every chapter, and yes, it is every chapter, can be read in isolation to the others as a completely self contained short story, whilst not disrupting the momentum and continuity of the story in any way. Once I stumbled upon this notion and blown away by the skill of this, I actually went back through the book at random picking certain chapters to re-read, particularly those in Israel, and those set in a certain location towards to the end of the book. When I reviewed Jerusalem Ablaze, I drew attention to the fact that this author so quickly enables the reader to connect on an emotional level with his characters, and this sustained use of structuring his chapters like this, adds even more to the intensity with which he enveigles us in his character’s lives. The Death of Baseball is a glorious miasma of contradictions and conflicts, the need to love, the need for acceptance and recognition, fame, faith, abuse, identity and hope. I found it thought provoking and powerfully emotional, and I loved the way it immersed me so fully in these two lives with their unique voices. This book has such a strong message at its core, clearly illustrating how we are all the same in our desire to achieve contentment and an equilibrium in our lives, however we choose to live and with whomever we choose to love. Highly, highly recommended.

This was not an easy book to read. That being said, the prose was beautiful and amazingly detailed. At times, the detail was almost overwhelmingly beautiful in spite of how challenging and outright horrendous some of the content was.

It took me far longer than usual to read this. I found that the subject matter left me inclined towards putting it down and taking a break.

Clyde/Marilyn is a young Japanese child living in a less-than-perfect family setting when the story begins. After a violent and abusive series of events unfold, they begin to question who they are. A belief that Clyde/Marilyn is in fact, the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe unfurls in the child's mind as they try to come to terms with all the trauma they are experiencing.

Raphael, the second character in the book, also begins with a horrible family life. He's been abused and has learned how to fight back by being aggressive, manipulative and underhanded.

Once these two characters come together... their backgrounds and trauma tangle together and lead them down an abusive road.

This is not a cheery book in the slightest... there's no happy ending and some of the things that happen are incredibly difficult to read about. If you have an interest in reading remarkable writing... about a challenging subject then this is a book you should add to your list.