“Hm,” the librarian said as she pulled the book off the holds shelf. “I’ll be interested to hear what you think of this one.”

“Have you read it?”

“No, but people have either really liked it or really hated it.”

And so I started Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding” with trepidation. It’s a baseball story, but it’s also a friendship story and kind of a coming-of-age story and a love story or two. I’ve read a few reviews that liken it to some of David Foster Wallace’s writing, which made me feel rather nice because I had the same thought when I was reading it. I’m not a literary critic, though, so I can’t put a finger on precisely what it is. It’s in the somewhat ridiculous names — Henry Skrimshander, Guert Affenlight — and in the importance of books that only exist in the novel’s world, I think, as well as those other things that I haven’t been able to quantify.

We all know how I feel about Wallace — and if you don’t: I love him so much that I can’t bear to read his final, posthumous novel. I sat with it open to the first page and cried. I’m maudlin and I know it. — so the fact that “The Art of Fielding” reminded me of his work is High Praise. The book is gently written without being dumbed-down, and I found the characters believable and for the most part likable.

I am firmly in the Really Liked It camp.