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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9781852429119
ISBN number: 1852429119
Label: Serpent's Tail
Manufacturer: Serpent's Tail
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: August 01, 2006
Publishing house: Serpent's Tail
Sale Popularity Level: 530370
Studio: Serpent's Tail
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'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
'Shriver confronts some disconcerting truths that defy a pat, politically correct resolution.'-The New York Times Book Review
'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 very first passion outside a tennis court. They marry.
Married life starts well but animated shop talk and blissful love-making soon give way to full-tilt competition over who can rise to the top first. In this captivating book, Shriver dissects the hazards of a two-career relationship in this brilliantly perceptive novel about the price both men and women pay for prizing achievement over love.
Born and raised in North Carolina, Lionel Shriver is the author of seven novels, a Guardian columnist, and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Economist. She lives in London. We Need To Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
I actually enjoyed this novel. But like other reviewers I found Willy to be unbearable and it was hard to see what her husband could love in her.
After reading "We Need to Talk About Kevin", I have become used to Shriver's obsession with detail, which I had found unnerving in the beginning. There's something about her style that is truly riveting.
I'm also interested in her penchant for male names (Willy, Lionel) for females, and her use of "the eye". To anyone who has read "Kevin", the eye reference here will be obvious. To see the "eye" theme again in "Double Fault" was disconcerting. Willy's therapist had a lazy wandering eye, that appears to emphasize his speech by its out of alignment movements. And then Willy has a run in with one of her husband's eyes ...
I have another Shriver novel on hand to read. If there is any reference to people with only one operable eye in IT, I'll be REALLY spooked!
Rated by buyers 
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If you like tennis you'll love this book. I know nothing about tennis so the very first couple of chapters were hard for me to get through - it was setting up the story which involves a lot of tennis. The story itself was good, I had a hard time putting it down.
Rated by buyers 
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Shriver had the courage to explore a situation where everything is not OK, which gives the book a realistic feel in places, and she deserves respect for resisting the Hollywood ending.
But I found the protagonist (Willy) so purely self-defeating, not to mention unlucky, it was unconvincing at the opposite extreme; or at the very least predictable. Of *course* she injures her knee at a critical moment. Of course the cheers Willy mistakenly thinks are for her are actually for her husband playing on an adjacent court. I kept searching for a redeeming quality in Willy's character but found none. Over the final 5/6ths of the book, she purposefully and unrelentingly sabotoges herself and everyone around her. How could anyone remain in love with this person? Why would Eric have stayed with her as long as he did?
There were some insights into professional tennis, but I couldn't trust them as many seemed implausible. In the history of the sport, has anyone started at age 18 and made it to the top 100? Would a male player in the 800's ever lose to a female player in the 300's?
The book is also depressing, which would be bearable if all the other elements were there. In this case it's just...depressing.
I haven't read other works by Shriver, and am not tempted to after suffering through this one.
Rated by buyers 
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A fan of Shriver's other works I kept reading Double Fault with the hope it would improve. It didn't. The main character, Willy Nijinsky, has spent her entire life trying to make it as professional tennis player. She has some limited sucess but is approaching retirement age without achieving her goal. She has no idea what do with her life if she isn't playing tennis. She has no other interests and no friends. Tennis isn't a game to her. Outside of tennis, Willy doesn't exist.
Oh, Willy has a husband, Eric, but his usefulness in her life ends when his tennis game becomes better than hers. Is Willy torn between the love of the game and the love of her husband? No. Her "love" for lack of a better word is tennis. Eric, the long-suffering husband, must be a masochistic to stay in this marriage.
The characters are unlikable but that is OK. I don't have to like the characters to enjoy a book. A realist story is fine too. Everything in life doesn't turn out perfectly. What really makes this a bad book is that we read the same thing page after page. It isn't necessarily to articulate Willy's dilemma over and over again. We got the very first time, the second time, the third time......
Rated by buyers -
After reading the powerful "We need to talk about Kevin" all other books seemed somehow inadequate and I was not able to finish a novel for months. However, I was thrilled to stumble across "Double Fault" written by the same extraordinary author. What a disappointment! Even for a complete tennis tragic this plot was boring and based on needless conflict. It was so appalling in every way that it's hard to believe that it was written by the same person.
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