The Squared Circle

It helps to really like basketball in order to enjoy this novel to its fullest. Interwoven around gritty, occasionally brutish, guys-only scenes of fraternity hazing, basketball team practice and tension-filled games is an acutely perceptive account of a young man's emotional and intellectual awakening. Sonny Youngblood is a mediocre student whose whole life is basketball. Guided by his good ole boy uncle, Sonny wins a basketball scholarship to Southern Illinois University, where his athletic talents quickly win him national celebrity. But as the SIU team rises in the national standings, Sonny becomes increasingly uncomfortable as he finds himself under the scrutiny of not only the sports media but also NCAA investigators. He begins to be troubled by memories of his past and then, more worrisome, starts feeling sick during basketball games. Just as he comes to the fumbling realization that basketball may not be the only thing, he irrevocably takes his fate in his own hands. Bennett's (I Can Hear the Mourning Dove) sketches out the pivotal episodes in Sonny's coming of age, inviting the reader to piece them together rather than assembling them, Chris Crutcher-style, into a single bombshell. His startling ending is sure to leave his audience with plenty to talk about. Ages 14-up. (Nov.)