Rating: 
Summary: Easy to read, honest, compassionate.
Review: A. Verghese has once again come up with a compassionate book with a style of writing that seems to flow with great ease. He is very honest with his feelings but his characters do not develop as much as one would want them to. I seemed to read the book more from a wife's perspective and empathized more with Ragini than with Verghese. I hope she has had as cathartic an experiece as he has seemed to have had with writing his two books. This book may get doctors to be more in touch with their feelings and could perhaps lead to the formation of support groups to help them deal with the issues they have to face everyday at the hospitals. Looking forward to his next book which I guess he is probably working on already.
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT BOOK!
Review: A great book. I had a chance to see Dr. Verghese in person when he came to Baylor College of Medicine to speak as a part of our "Compassion and the Art of Medicine" lecture series. He truly is an inspiration for aspring doctors... a very well written book. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Poignant and compelling. Couldn't lay it down!
Review: This is one of the best books I've read recently. Verghese was able to treat several very relevant themes (male bonding, drug-related problems, marriage problems) in great depth with the insight gained only by personal experience. The loss of his friend, in light of his vast medical experience, drives home the point very clearly that our journey through life is truly a very personal one, and although other people can impact it in many ways, we are all ultimately responsible for our own decisions. Sometimes no amount of caring or understanding can divert another from his or her path. I enjoyed very much the juxtaposition of the tennis and doctor themes, both of which he was a master, against the relationships he really could not control, diagnose, or cure. The style of writing used made me feel that I was looking into the very heart and soul of the writer.
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Summary: An Outsider looks back
Review: "The Tennis Partner" is Abraham Verghese's story of his friendship with a young physician, David Smith, beset with cocaine addiction. Both their common love of tennis and the painful trials each experiences serve as a backdrop for the deeper issues that Verghese explores. Ultimately, this book is about secrets--that we call carry them. Some of us escape them, some of us don't, Verghese seems to say. Verghese's book asks to be treated as literature. Far be it from him to simply dwell on "the hellish depths of deception" and the "heights of intimacy" as the jacket cover reads. Verghese is an introspective writer, searching for illumination and subtle understandings, while acknowledging that the truths he reveals existed long before he discovered them--hidden in his sons' questions, the track marks of needle sticks along a forearm, a mother watching her son die of AIDS. As Verghese writes at the end: the stars unfolded before him in "a private showing," yet "they had been there all along." I find that Verghese's voice lingers with me. It is calm and focused, yet disconcerting--ironic, spare, and edgy. He is careful with his wit, dispensing it with sleight of hand that leaves me smiling broadly at his ability. Clearly Verghese is a writer of some talent. In this book, tennis is more than simple metaphor. It becomes the place where the psyche may escape, where one can transcend failings and secrets, the goal being to "get the ball back over the net just one more time." I find fascinating this subtext of tennis as escape, mirroring cocaine. Tennis as ritual, the pounding rhythm of shared volleys seemingly becomes Verghese's refuge from a failing marriage. Tennis greats such as Pancho Segura and Bill Tilden acquire almost godlike status as Verghese aspires to them. David's withdrawal into cocaine, however, transforms him into "a creature I knew but did not recognize." Despite his ability, tennis could never save David. For all the richness of their relationship, Verghese discovers that David in the end "still walks alone." The theme of intimacy juxtaposed against isolation is woven throughout the book. What Verghese never openly says is that he too walks alone. It is almost as if he never could really understand David or even his wife, whom he describes as unexpectedly blossoming after his departure. Verghese writes of "the paradox of the humane, empathetic physician, like David, who shows little humanity to himself." The parallel paradox is that of Verghese, the richness of his expression and feeling contrasted with the distance between himself and the people he loves. This tension is intriguing. I wish Verghese had included some thoughts on why he chose to write this book. The acknowledgement of such a process in "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom was vital to its honesty, I believe. A short account in an epilogue would have sufficed. All things considered, "The Tennis Partner" is a book that richly rewards, and I highly recommend it. Verghese is immensely talented, yet one gets the feeling that he is yet to reach the full extent of his ability. I look forward to his future work.
Rating: 
Summary: Gentle book that gives insight into male friendship. GOOD!
Review: This book creates a languge that lies underneath the stereotypical relations between the sexes. At one level the author operates in a world of words that we stumble around with to touch each other. What is poignant about the journal like quality of this writing, is that it brings alive the many levels of communication, (mis)comprehension and intention that exist between a male realm and a female realm. The story of the (male) friendship serves not only for the rather tragic story, but throws into relief the acts through which those men affirm friendship. By making transparent those actions, the author lays bare the underlying inactions, unspoken words, patterns of behaviour between men, that are unlike in the presence of women! Gently, and typically understated, I think the author shows the vulnerability of the veneer through which men operate. There is a quality of humanity, of pathos, which contrasts with the clumsy tenets of outward behaviour that work in a culturally diffuse, gendered world.
Rating: 
Summary: Dr. Perfect loses one
Review: What a self-righteous book this is. We have here a story of a doctor who, apparently, except for committing adultery once (boy, women can be touchy!), is everything anyone could ask for in a human being. He can diagnose any illness with ease. He can tell you how to run your life very easily, as well. You need free advice? Get it here! However, you need help in the middle of the night? Sorry, he's sleeping. I did not like this book about a doctor who seems to have very little compassion for his drug-dependent friend. As long as the doctor's needs for companionship are met, everything is all right. As long as his intern's life and decisions revolve around what the doctor wants, then things are going well, and aren't we all grateful? However, our doc gets very peavish when his friend demonstrates some independence about his choice of specialty. Our doc also gets jealous of the women his friend dates. Is there some hypocrisy here? The doc criticizes his intern for cheating on the women he sees, but hasn't he done that to his wife? And why is he coveting these women now? This book does tell a poignant story about drug addiction, but this story gets lost since the subject is only a satelite to the story teller. Except for the story teller, the other characters seemed very one-dimensional. I'm sure Dr. Verghese didn't intend to be the selfish protagonist of his book, but he comes across that way to me.
Rating:
Summary: A Quick and Entertaining Read
Review: A well written book. This is a touching and sad story but ultimately uplifting.
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Summary: Thoughtful, sensative writing on the boundries of friendship
Review: Wonderful, thoughtful and sensative writing makes this second book by Abraham Verghese a must read for 1998. He writes in careful and sometimes shocking detail about his friend and tennis partner who is a drug user. More specifically it is about the boundries of friendship and how much we can help someone we care about. Lots of interesting medical stories are bound with tennis metaphors in this true tale. Verghese's first book, My Own Country was one of my book group's all time favorites -- if you missed it, I recommend you go back and read that book also.
Rating:
Summary: Well crafted, engaging, and interesting.
Review: "The Tennis Partner" focuses on the author's friendship with a fellow doctor who had once been a tennis pro and also a cocaine addict. But the book also weaves together other aspects of the author's life during a five-year period: his profession (internal medicine), his passion for tennis, the breakup of his marriage, and his efforts to create a home for himself as a newly single man. I liked the way in which these themes were dealt with in short chapters, some of which were single-topic (such as a tennis lesson with Pancho Segura), and others of which brought together several threads of the author's life. The shifts from medicine, to tennis, to marriage, and so forth, were smoothly accomplished and kept me engaged and interested. I also liked that the book was informative, especially about drug addiction, diagnosis of diseases, and the subtleties of tennis. The author may strike some readers as a bit of a showoff where his medical skills and tennis are concerned, but I see his descriptions of these skills as realistic self-assessments: he's good at what he does. My only complaint is that Verghese (the author) seems humorless and not especially likable. But I guess I should cut him some slack here, considering that the book covers a dark period of his life. In reading his "New Yorker" pieces, Verghese has not struck me this way. I recommend this book.
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Summary: Excellent study of how great gifts can't save a flawed life
Review: Abraham Verghese is a physician, a deeply inquisitive student of human nature, and a dark, poetic writer. This book reminds me of another of my favorites, Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It," with tennis instead of fishing. In the years that have elapsed since "My Own Country," Verghese's marriage has collapsed, and he has moved to a teaching hospital in Texas. One of his students is a young man named David Smith, who had briefly played pro tennis before beginning medical school. Verghese, an avid tennis player, hesitantly asks if they might play together. Smith, like the younger brother in "A River Runs Through It," is charming, lovable, smart, and supremely gifted in his chosen sport; on the tennis court, he seems to be transformed into a different, and better, person. But his gifts aren't enough to save his life; he's an intravenous drug abuser, in and out of recovery and rehab. When the two men play tennis together, their support for each other, and their anger and frustrations, are all played out on the tennis court. As in "My Own Country," Verghese reveals his fascination with people from all walks of life. His emotional inquisitiveness leads him to take risks, as when he accepts a junkie's offer of a tour of "his" world. Yet for all his curiosity and his desire to learn to see the world through the eyes of others, Verghese was unable to save his friend, and he was even unable to save his own marriage. Sadly, he wonders if his marriage might have survived if he had invested himself in it as deeply as he invested himself in the minutiae of tennis.
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