Double Fault

Lionel Shriver's infamous We Need To Talk About Kevin was rightly lauded for tackling thorny issues in a sensitive, unsensationalised, yet undeniably thrilling fashion. It's a great book that makes you think about having children when maybe you don't really want them, or finding yourself with the kind of out-of-control offspring no parent could ever want.

Her follow-up, Double Fault, isn't quite as successful or memorable, though there's no doubt that when Shriver gets up to steam, she writes about relationships with an unforgiving honesty that makes you question your own life in much the same way ...Kevin did.

Double Fault tells the story of Willy Novinsky and Eric Oberdorf, two professional tennis players who fall in love but find their relationship troubled from the outset by their own overly competitive natures.

I approached the book with caution because I have little interest in sport. That said, I can at least see the potential for excitement in a tennis match (unlike say, a football match), though the world of pro-sports isn't one that enthrals me in the same way as a rags-to-riches-to-rags story set in the music business might. But if the writing's good enough...

The writing is good enough. Eventually. After a hundred or so pages, I was captivated by the destructive rivalry and jealousy that possesses Willy, and the book's second act is pretty much unputdownable. It's a bit of a struggle to get there though - early on, Shriver rackets the reader over the head with her use of tennis as a metaphor for relationships. Willy and Eric's first sexual encounter takes place on centre court, with the net in between them for god's sake! There are some pretty groan-worthy puns along the way too...

But it was too late to worry about what she was getting into because something was already getting into her.

In a lighter, more comedic book, this would be forgivable... but in such an otherwise serious (hell, tragic) tale, it's the sort of gag that strikes the wrong tone. Blimey - even the cactus in Willy's apartment becomes a clumsy metaphor for the status of her relationship...

Bulbous with spurts of erratic growth from irregular waterings, the prickly, misshapen lumps alerted Willy to the dangers of the itinerant marriage, by describing the thorny deformities you fashion when tenderness is too sporadic.

Ouch. Not only a tortured metaphor, but way too many adjectives too. It's ironic that elsewhere in the story, while describing the unpublished books Willy's father keeps boxed up in his attic, Shriver writes, "the prose clanked with thesaurus plunder". Physician, heal thyself.

Despite all this, Double Fault is worth sticking with not just for the gripping, self-destructive downfall of its heroine, but also for the bleak, anti-romcom ending. And along the way, Shriver raises some thought-provoking questions I was able apply to my own life...

"There may be one activity in everyone's life that expresses them - that is them," Willy speculated. "Maybe for some people that's dancing, or painting a picture; maybe it's just thinking.* For me, it's tennis. The first time I connected with a ball was like coming home."

Because for every winner there must be thousands of unsung losers. As Willy explains to her psychiatrist...

"In every novel I read, the hero prevails. He has to suffer adversity, of course, or there wouldn't be a book. But by the end, it's always Rocky. No one writes about people who bite the dust. So I keep expecting that one day I'm going to turn my own page and in the last chapter everything turns out swell."

"Read some old books," (the psychiatrist recommends, bringing out a copy of Jude The Obscure). "This era doesn't suit your state of mind."

Anyone looking for an 'Eye Of The Tiger' soundtracked ending from Double Fault should definitely look elsewhere.



*Maybe it's... writing. Unlike tennis though, at least you're not written off by your mid-20's... so I'm not giving up just yet.