SUNDAY MONEY

A girl in 1970s Brooklyn gets the chance to make her future playing ball in Hill’s debut novel.

Claire Joyce loves basketball. John, one of her brothers, is a high school basketball star, though the kind of ball John and the other boys play is different from the sport available to girls like Claire—only certain “roving” players can move around the whole court in the girls’ games, and they have to wear restrictive uniforms featuring collars, skirts, and belts. Changes may be on the horizon, though: “Congress is looking at a bill that will allow girls to have equal access to sports money in federally funded programs,” John tells her. “If that passes, you might even be able to play basketball and get college funded, too.” Basketball also provides a welcome escape from life at home; Claire and her siblings contend with their alcoholic mother while their father, a cab driver, works nights and sleeps all day. Bobby, another brother, is quiet but prone to sudden acts of violence, while the gentle John increasingly gets into trouble with drugs and the law. Just as John predicted, Title IX goes into effect. Suddenly, girls’ basketball is a big deal—big enough that it might mean Claire could get a college scholarship and escape the claustrophobic environs of Irish Catholic Brooklyn. Hill’s prose is muscular and matter-of-fact, much like the maxims that govern Claire’s actions on the court: “When we’re stupid, we think our shot is the only answer. One of our exercises during official practice is to constantly pass the ball, looking for the open person…The coach always says we have to play smart. Eyes out for the open player. Hold back, measure up, break out.” The plot suffers slightly from a sense of inevitably—Claire’s path is always certain, as is John’s—which gives the pacing a somewhat torpid quality. Even so, Hill captures a watershed moment in the history of sports in a way that highlights how transformative athletics can be, especially in the lives of young women.

A sports novel offering a historical perspective.