Double Fault

Rating:
Summary: Searing book, gutsy author
Review: A great book, and far bigger than its factual framework ofprofessional tennis. Essentially, Shriver wants to showwhat can happen when a husband and wife are uncompromsingly ambitious, which occurs more and more as women take on careers. She succeeds brilliantly, but in the process has to depict men and women behaving very badly indeed. It's not her fault; that's real life. Readers who like tradtionally redemptive and redeemable characters and happy resolutions, though, had better open their minds before tackling DOUBLE FAULT. It's worth the effort. (The reader from Fox River Grove might as well stick to Harlequin romances, it seems.) The sadness of Shriver's book is completely earned, and it will make a sophisticated reader think hard about how to manage life as someone else's partner. The book is written in the traditional, realistic voice, and with impressive literary virtuosity. The subject-matter, as mentioned, pushes the envelope. What you wind up with is a formally disciplined, stylish novel with social guts.

Rating:
Summary: I love this book
Review: An avid tennis player I am when I picked up a copy of "Double Fault" which clearly stated on the inside cover that it was a novel about an even harder sport- love and marriage. So begins the in depth, realistic love story/tennis story of two sometimes interesting, sometimes intelligent, sometimes spoiled characters Eric and Willy. I like this story highly because it seems very possible for such events to happen when you combine love and career into the same relationship. The ups and downs, the jealousies, the competitive drive of the heart to win or succeed, often overlooking the more important things in life.
It begins with how they meet and leaves you like all great novels do...a little bit hanging.
I'm sure Andre and Steffi have read this one!

Rating:
Summary: An eloquent, unsparing, wry book on the two-career marriage
Review: This beautifully written, razor-sharp novel explores near-virgin
territory for literary fiction: career rivalry in the modern
marriage. Two professional tennis players, Wilhemena "Willy"
Novinsky and Eric Oberdorf -- both poignantly flawed -- fall in
love and wed, but the romance turns stormy when one fares better
than the other on the pro tour. By situating her characters in
the tennis world (rather than, say, in law practice or the
advertising biz), the author gives the story a kinetic, physical
dimension that enables the reader to feel more acutely the
characters' respective demise and ascendance. But thanks to Ms.
Shriver's total control of the subject matter and keen attention
to emotional by-play, the reader (properly) cares more about the
fate of the marriage than who "wins." Ms. Shriver nicely
tempers her grave assessment of marital competition with mordant
wit and droll walk-ons.

Although the stuff of this book is psychologically
sophisticated, the plot is so tight and the writing so fluid that
the pages just about turn themselves. I couldn't put it down.
DOUBLE FAULT is the first serious fictional treatment of a
substantial problem for Generation X. We're lucky Lionel
Shriver chose to tackle it, since I doubt that subsequent
writers will be able to improve on her effort.