Chessville Reviews - The Chess Team - by James H Sawaski

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The Chess Team
(A Novel)

by James H Sawaski

iUniverse, 2005

ISBN: 0595346308

softcover, 136 pages

Reviewed by David Surratt

Hoosiers. The Mighty Ducks. The Bad News Bears. The Karate Kid. The Horatio Alger genre has served many authors well, and produced a number of memorable stories & films. So why shouldn't a novice author make use of it in his first novel? Maybe because it's such an over-used theme, that it really takes a lot of talent to pull it off; to make it work without seeming trite? Does Sawatski succeed in doing so? Well, walk with me a bit, and we'll talk...

The story's main character is Jim Berzchak, whose life is shattered by a finger-fehler in the final round of the State High School Championships which costs his team, the underdog Escanaba Eskimos, the state title. The story then is about how Jim goes to pieces, his life a shambles, and how, with the help of his best buddy & a group of high-school chess players, he tries to pull his life back together again, overcome his personal demons, and learn to love chess, and life, again. Does he succeed? Oh come on now, you don't think I'm going to give away the ending here at the very beginning of the review, do you?

The author, on his website, offers these comments about the book:

Jim Berzchak has a gift. His capabilities in the game of chess are remarkable and his brain works at levels most people only dream about. However, a horrific blunder while playing at the high school state tournament costs his Escanaba Eskimos the team championship. Depressed, he slips into a world of solitude. His life stalls and although he studies chess aggressively and enhances his skills, other aspects to his well being become reclusive.

15 years later a group of high school students coax Jim into reopening the defunct chess program. Through the kids, he finds he has an even better gift, the ability to teach the game and make it exciting. "The Eskychess Express is back on track!" or so it seems.

Issues abound with their newfound success. Personal problems infect the team. Opponents take notice and hone their skills to incomprehensible levels. The pressure of competition makes Jim feel like collapsing. Can he get his life in order and lead his Eskimos over the second place hump? Or will they end up like him, devastated in life because they pinned too many hopes on winning a state championship title?

The Chess Team is printed by iUniverse, Inc., an online self-publishing enterprise, where authors pay a fee to have their book(s) published. Nothing wrong with self-publishing, but it's not quite the same as reading that Random House or Gambit, e.g., has just agreed to publish you. Still, the quality of the book is satisfactory, with adequate white space, type font, etc. The paper does seem a bit yellowish though. There are no diagrams or chess notation used, so even non-chessplayers can enjoy the book without fear of getting lost.

Now please bear in mind that I have a particular fondness for chess-themed fiction. I've managed to snag every single piece of it that's come through Chessville's doors to review it myself. (Yes, sometimes I'm a selfish bugger! But I digress...) I like chess fiction a lot, and this balanced my trepidation about the book's publication. So with an open mind I began reading about...James? Err, no. I mean Jim. James (the author) bases much of the book on his own experiences as a member of the Escanaba Eskimos chess team. He lives in the same geographic area that Jim (the book's main character) does. They are both chess players and chess coaches. So I wonder just how much of the book is biographical, and how much is invented.

James H. Sawaski

Whichever the case, I have to say that I enjoyed the read. I liked the main character, despite, or perhaps because of, his all too human frailties. I enjoyed reading about the team's matches, and about Jim's boyhood friend and teammate who reenters his life. And I enjoyed reading about Jim's reemergence from his self-imposed exile from the game.

Still, The Chess Team left me wishing for better. I wanted a less predictable plot line. Although the specifics were not easy to guess, the general direction of the plot seemed all too familiar. Many of the characters seemed underdeveloped too. I wanted to know more about the team members, for example, but thought their appearances here in the book left them looking a might thin, shallow even. There were, as well, a number of places where I thought a good editor could help to improve the flow and pace of the book, as well as correct a few grammatical issues. Take this paragraph for example (oh, how I would love to get my red pencil on this!):

Walters put his long fingers on his short blonde hair and sat mesmerized in deep thought. His husky football player body remained motionless like a statue for a long time, all the while Dillard rocked back and forth frantically on his chair. An anxiety attack grabbed him as he could see that if Walters sacrificed a knight for a pawn, he could at the very least set off a perpetual check and make Dillard agree to a draw. He reaffirmed his calculations and knew the state championship was really now theirs with no doubt in the equation anymore. No way would the chance be missed, if he could see the combination, so did his teammate.

Not that these criticisms should detract from the enjoyment of the story, I offer them only for thoroughness' sake. Still, it seemed clear that this was, after all, a first effort. I look forward to the sequel though, The Next Chess Team, due out this spring (2006).