MAKE IT, TAKE IT
A novel-in-stories by Rus Bradburd
An inventive linked story collection, Make It, Take It sneaks the reader past the press conferences, locker rooms, and huddles of college basketball. Without judgment or sentimentality, Rus Bradburd lays bare the web of conflicts between players and coaches, blacks and whites, revealing the complex humanity of a team’s inner circle. Here, every choice has a very real cost.
The team rides the rollercoaster of a year in college ball, hoping for an NCAA tournament bid. Rather than the predictable condemnation of college athletics, this inventive novel-in-stories exposes the peculiar web of relationships between black and white players and coaches, and the complex and fragile humanity of a team’s inner circle – where every choice has a very real cost.
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Praise for Make It, Take It
“Coach Pytel’s pivots to keep his job, his marriage, and his troubled players afloat are so much fun to watch that you may not even notice Bradburd’s hard-won wisdom until it socks you. For all the hilarity in these pages, Make It, Take It is a soul-wrenching indictment of how the game behind the game is played.”
– Alex Shakar, author of Luminarium, winner of the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
“Rus Bradburd, like other tough visionaries, has selected a universe unique unto itself — college basketball. In it, he reveals quintessential American issues: race, power, corruption, and, sometimes, excellence. Make It, Take It casts light and shadow on both the coaches and the players. It also quietly invites the reader to consider the ways in which basketball reflects a country’s virtues as well as its lamentable flaws. This is a very savvy book.”
– Antonya Nelson, author of Nothing Right
The SportingNews article on Make It, Take It can be found here.