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Double Fault
£7.99
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| Online Price | £7.99 |
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Book Details
- ISBN 9781852424909
- 3 May 2007
- 352pp
- Paperback
Trade Resources
Synopsis
‘Love me, love my game’ says twenty-three year-old Willy Novinsky. Ever since she picked up a racquet at the age of four, tennis has been Willy’s one love, until the day she meets Eric Oberdorf. She’s a middle-ranked professional tennis player and he’s a Princeton graduate who took up playing tennis at the age of eighteen. Low-ranked 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.
Married life starts well but soon gives way to full-tilt competition over who can rise to the top first. Driven and gifted, Willy maintains the lead until she severs her knee ligaments in a fall. As Willy recuperates, her ranking plummets whilst her husband’s climbs, until he is eventually playing in the US 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.
‘A brilliant tale of doomed love... Double Fault is a compelling and playfully ironic take on the sex wars’ Observer Review
‘Shriver is a truly remarkable star in the literary firmament... I doubt there is any thoughtful woman who does not recognise herself somewhere in Shriver’s writing’ Lisa Jardine, Financial Times
Reviews
‘Shriver confronts some disconcerting truths that defy a pat, politically correct resolution’ New York Times Book Review
A brilliant tale of doomed love’ The Observer
‘A tale of thwarted ambition, rivalry and resentment’ Eve
‘Shriver has a terrible gift for laying bare for us the emotions that lie just beneath the skin. I doubt that there is any thoughtful woman who does not recognize herself somewhere in Shriver’s writing’ Financial Times
‘A terrific approach shot with which she sets things up for the deadly putaway volley that is Kevin’ The Independent
‘This book is about the small and large ways we hurt each other in the greatest competition on the face of the earth: Love. Buy it. It belongs on that shelf of books you will return to again and again’ Harry Crews
This is a smart, perceptive novel about romance and the rivalry on the tennis circuit”
Sainsbury’s Magazine
‘A powerful and cautionary tale of success and self-destruction’
Diva
‘Shriver’s exploration of [Willy’s] character is so fearless that, although readers may not sympathise with her, they’ll understand why she’s driven to destroy what she loves’ Metro