We Need To Talk About Kevin was a monster hit for me.
In Double Fault Shriver takes a look at the evolving needs and roles of women in modern marriages using the interesting example of two professional tennis players that get married to each other, and partially, as a result, see a decline in the wife's professional tennis fortunes, whilst the husband's improves past her An interesting read, although the main female character could be deemed to be too ingrained in her ego and the main male character 'too perfect'.
out of, Two Star read,
read um,, gostei do livro e das referências ao tênis mas acho que essa foi a personagem mais irritante que li esse ano porém ela era condizente com alguns atletas profissionais que conheci.
Não é o melhor livro da autora que eu amo e algumas vezes irrita por usar muitas metáforas relacionadas ao tênis.
Mas é uma ótima história e a protagonista não tem nada de clichê, I am a fan of Lionel Shriver but, . .
When bad editing can ruin a book for you
Sloppy editing can drive me slightly nuts.
In this book, but became hut, unsurprising became unsurprinsing: one character Axel became Axe on Pgthen reverted to Axel at the end of Pgand no, it wasn't a nickname, commas appeared randomly.
I found simply myself waiting for the next mistake,
The blurb says this novel uses tennis simply as a metaphor well, it was a pretty big metaphor, I got a bit lost in the tennis: ranking, shots, style, tournaments, training, If you love tennis, you will enjoy this book,
One of Shriver's earlier novels, this doesn't shine for me with the brilliance of her sitelinkSo Much for That.
I can't blame a writer because I'm not a tennis fanatic or for bad editing so,. I really think that Lionel Shriver is somewhat of an underrated writer, I have read several of her books and she has excellent character development and is not afraid to tackle dense and conflictual subject matter.
This novel really focuses on the damage we do to each other in a marriage and the impact of two highly competitive people trying to have a relationship.
The level of egotistical selfishness in professional athletes in this novel was amazing, Shriver writes beautifully and integrates well thought out metaphors and turns of phrase, I would recommend her as a writer and liked this novel a lot, An ardent middleranked professional tennis player, Willy Novinsky meets her match in Eric Oberdorf, the handsome rogue she drubs in a pickup game in Manhattan's Riverside Park.
Eric is charmingly gracious in defeat, and his casual confidence takes her in, Lowranked but untested, Eric, too, aims to make his mark on the international tennis circuit, Willy beholds compatibility spiced with friendly rivalry, and discovers her first passion outside a tennis court, They marry. Conjugal life starts well on the Upper West Side of New York, But animated shop talk and blissful lovemaking soon give way to fulltilt competition over who can rise to the top first, Driven and gifted, Willy maintains the lead until she severs her knee ligaments in a devastating spill, As Willy recuperates, her ranking plummets just as her husband becomes the upstart darling of the tennis circuit, Ultimately Eric plays in the U, S. Open. Anguished at falling short of her lifelong dream and resentful of her husband's success, Willy slides irresistibly toward the first quiet tragedy of her young life.
There are but two "strikes" in a tennis "point, " A marriage typically has many, but in most there are a finite, if unknown, number of opportunities to win or lose, Double Fault explores a relationship using that sports metaphor, With two highly competitive, driven individuals harnessed as the team, neither love nor marriage seems to have much chance of surviving their separate interests and egos.
The novel successfully mimics the sport, a match where unforced errors as often as power serves or crosscourt smashes determine the outcomean outcome as predictable and unsatisfying as any in which one player significantly outranks
the other.
It is a match in which neither player seems deserving of an ovation from the reader, Shriver does "dark' as well as it can be done, She writes well. She makes me think. She is not afraid to be real, Really great psychological insight into Willy and her selfhatred, I know someone like that, and it really put action into words mellifluously, She basically selfsabotages everything in her life because it's better to be a loser than mediocre, or, to be great, but not as good as her husband.
As a loser, she gets sympathy, And as other reviewers have said, Double Fault manages monotonous day to day detail without ever being boring, The details of opening mail or going to a restaurant or having a marital spat manages to be interesting, even thrilling, in the context.
The tragedy happens in slow motion, in fits and spurts, It's not some downhill decline, but rather a bumpy road, which fits with real life more accurately than a lot of other tragic stories I've read that are constructed to fit the steep downhill narrative.
This book is a powerful portrayal of the destructive nature of competitiveness, I felt that it made me think more deeply about the important difference between ambition and competition, As such being ambitious is mainly directed at yourself, aiming at improving your last score for example or being keen to do your very best whatever the activity or task at hand.
Competition however appears to be directed at others, the importance to climb to the top, i, e. in this case reach the top of the tennis champions listings, Ambition is hence the healthier 'version' because what you want is to reach your potential which allows for selfdiscovery and you can learn to accept who you are.
As for competition it is frustrating at the best of times because you are constantly going to face people who may be better than you and if that is the value you put on your life, it's disheartening.
I sensed loneliness and fear in the female character of the story and it made me think a lot about the fact that competitiveness needs guided with compassion or you end up in a one way tunnel where there is no way out.
It's a thoughtprovoking read! Spoilers ahead
I found it hard to rate this book on one hand it did have a compelling 'havetofinish' quality , if a bit voyeuristic in nature, on the other, it has patches of purple prose, notably the love/sex scenes.
Not many of those thank goodness, with their shattering orgasmic noises though these are his , for a change, And some strange, incomprehensible sentences, These may have been Kindle errors of course, The sentences that is, not the orgasmic noise And of course ,as many reviwers have already noted , the protagonists are unlikeable and driven and often stupid.
Still, one shouldn't require ones protagonists to be nice, and I do think Lionel Shriver has done a bold job in presenting Willy Wilhelmina and Eric to us.
Willy is a deeply flawed, even damaged character and the book as much as anything else details her descent into a maelstrom of self blame and masochism.
I notice several reviewers hate her for having an abortion without even consulting her husband, citing this as her ultimate in selfish behaviour.
I saw it as almost worse than this, I think she did it as a mad INVITATION to be hated and blamed and to get the long suffering Eric to punish her as she felt she deserved.
So, as you see, not a fun read particularly if like me, you are uncomfortable with female mascochism, . .
I don't know how it would read if you really liked and understood tennis, I don't, as I had believed the blurb that said it was 'not really about tennis except as a metaphor'.
Yes, true in theory I suppose but there was a whole lot of tennis in it in fact a whole lot in huge detail in terms of strokes and plays and games and sets and scores and ranking and so on.
Let alone the ongoing constant metaphor of love as a desperate game where people must win and lose,
I did like Shriver's management of anger at the way in which women's achievements are necessarily and routinely subjected to their male counterparts and the injustice of the systems that hold this in place.
In addition she has some thoughtprovoking discussions going on about how women and men handle emotions under pressure and she doesn't labour this, she just offers it for interest.
For instance she has Eric say of Monica Seles' long traumatised absence from tennis after being non life threateningly stabbed " I don't think a man would have been 'tramuatised'.
I think a man would have been angry, "
Shriver seems to have a thing about names , Willy and her sister Gert Gert!! have surely the most unpleasing names in the lexicon of girls names.
Eric Oberdorf and Max Upchurch by contrast being rather fine and warriorlike, Willy's walleyed therapist is called Edsel wasn't that the name of a laughably bad car model
So, all in all, I don't know about this book.
I don't think I liked it and I was pleased to find it is earlier than We Have to Talk About Kevin which is incomparably better than this.
I read this book because I immensely enjoyed two of Lionel Shriver's other books The PostBirthday World and We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Usually when I find a book that I like, I immediately try to find other books by the author and read them.
Although I enjoyed this book, I didn't find it as intriguing or involving as her others, And, yes, the author is a woman I just assumed it was a man when I began The PostBirthday World and kept thinking "This guy can really write from a woman's point of view" but then later found out it was a woman! Anyway, I'm not saying this is a bad book by any means.
. . just that I didn't love it as much as the two others I have read,
This book is about a marriage and tennis, The protagonist is a semiprofessional tennis player named Willy Novinsky, Willy has lived and breathed tennis since she was a young girl and has centered her whole life on being a successful professional tennis player.
When she meets Eric Oberdorf during an impromptu tennis game at Riverside Park, she is intrigued by his natural talent and his good looks.
He is intrigued by her, Because she's never made room in her life for romance, it seems like a match made in heaven to find a man who admires her tennis game and shares her interest in tennis.
Eric begins pursuing tennis as a profession as his natural talent begins to blossom, They fall in love and marry, And things are good until Eric's career begins to eclipse Willy's career, . .
At its heart, the book is about Willy's struggle to come to terms with her life, . . as a wife, as a tennis player, and as a woman, I loved that she wasn't a "typical" woman that you often find in books, She is a competitive woman who wants to win, Who values tennis more than anything in the world possibly even her husband, Her struggle to come to terms with these issues is very interesting but painful to watch, As someone who has never been very passionate about a career, I struggled to watch Willy deal with her loss of identity as her tennis career begins to falter.
Willy isn't a completely sympathetic character, and I often found myself struggling to like her, But at the end, I found myself wanting to know what the future held for her,
Although this wasn't my favorite book of Lionel Shriver's, it was a good read, If you are particularly fond of tennis, you might find even more to love about this book, All in all, I give the book a C ranking,
.