Sports reporter and basketball player Kate Fagan (What Made Maddy Run; The Three Lives of Cate Kay) scores big with Instant Classic, a novel of three women navigating basketball, same-sex love, and Hollywood over decades. This is a big-hearted love story, a review of how far women's sports have and have not come since the 1950s, and a rejuvenating narrative of female friendships.
In alternating chapters, Fagan follows three strong characters. In present-day Los Angeles, Marion May wishes desperately to step out of her father's shadow as a film director. The two also share a background in and love of basketball, but perhaps little else; Marion is forever seeking his approval and hiding her true self. Into her trajectory steps Jaz Jones, a self-assured, openly gay star in the WNBA, though her career may be nearing its end. With Jaz comes her coach and lifelong parental figure, Harper Kidd, now in late life. It is Jaz's idea that Marion's next film should tell Harper's story: the farm girl who played for Hanes Hosiery for a single season during their early-1950s domination of the Amateur Athletic Union before she moved out west and reinvented herself again. A former collegiate player, Marion is surprised at how strongly she is drawn to Harper's account (told in riveting flashback sequences), which quickly expands to encompass Jaz's very different one. But the film will also include both women's queer identities--a thread Marion still struggles to confront in her own life, and a story that Hollywood is yet more reluctant to tell. "Can you believe it?" Jaz tells her, "We're mythologizing women's sports, and they're paying us to do it." But of course it won't be that simple. Alongside the highs and lows of screenwriting and production comes Marion's personal growth and the romance she yearns for and fears.
Fagan writes moving, stirring, in-the-moment action scenes, most notably on the basketball court, but she also includes scenes of love, conflict, and self-discovery, as when young Harper finally finds a place where she fits in, or looks up "lesbian" in the dictionary. Good sportswriting is deceptively difficult, but Fagan has that gift; in parallel, Marion and her team ask themselves, "Would it be easier to make basketball players good actors or actors good basketball players?" This layering of basketball and art is consistently rewarding, and sports fans will be on the edge of their seats, but the human drama of self-actualization and the fulfillment of a journey toward love and acceptance are at least as central. Instant Classic is a heart-wrenching, ultimately heartwarming feat that lives up to its name. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia
Shelf Talker: A young film director takes a gamble on the narrative of a trailblazer in women's basketball, which leads her to face her own hidden truths, in this heartfelt novel about queer love, women's sports, and the power of storytelling.