Open Net

A season with the Boston Bruins is the basis for Plimpton's absorbing personal report ... A winning entertainment for fans of sports, told with warmth and integrity * Publishers Weekly *
[Plimpton's] sojourn with the Bruins in training camp culminated in a five-minute stint in goal against the Philadelphia Flyers ... Plimpton tries valiantly to acquire the skills of the position and comes to his moment of truth * Library Journal *
Plimpton's charm proves irresistible. Once again, he gets the athletes to like him and to share with him their fears and oddest memories * New York Times *
With his gentle, ironic tone, and unwillingness to take himself too seriously, along with Roger Angell, John Updike and Norman Mailer he made writing about sports something that mattered * Guardian *
What drives these books, and has made them so popular, is Plimpton's continuous bond-making with the reader and the comedy inherent in his predicament. He is the Everyman, earnests and frail, wandering in a world of supermen, beset by fears of catastrophic violence and public humiliation, yet gamely facing it all in order to survive and tell the tale... A prodigious linguistic ability is on display throughout, with a defining image often appended at the end of a sentence like a surprise dessert. -- Timothy O'Grady * Times Literary Supplement *