Product Description

Love me, love my gameÂ’ says twenty-three year-old Willy Novinsky. Ever since she picked up a racquet at the age of four, tennis has been WillyÂ’s one love, until the day she meets Eric Oberdorf. SheÂ’s a middle-ranked professional tennis player and heÂ’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 husbandÂ’s climbs, until he is eventually playing in the US Open. Anguished at falling short of her lifelong dream and resentful of her husbandÂ’s success, Willy slides irresistibly toward the first quiet tragedy of her young life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104799 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"'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 'When feminism has become the politics that dare not speak its name, it is refreshing to find an author who will bring such renewed vigour to the gender wars' Guardian 'With prose as taut as a well-strung racket, you'll be captivated' Marie Claire 'I was riveted by this novel' Lesley Glaister, Waterstone's Books Quarterly"

Observer Review, May 7, 2006
‘A brilliant tale of doomed love’

Marie-Claire, June 2006
‘With prose as taut as a well-strung racket, you’ll be captivated’

Customer Reviews

A non-story excellently written
It is inevitable that any examination of Double Fault will take place within the context of the Kevin phenomenon. If you're considering reading this book, it's likely to be because of your love of Kevin. Your appreciation of Double Fault is likely to depend on what it was you loved about Kevin.
Double Fault is a realistic, detailed and thought-provoking analysis of the deterioration of a marriage in the same way that Kevin depicted the deterioration of the mother-son relationship. Nobody writes dysfunction like Shriver.
Both novels are written from the point of view of flawed anti-heroines, with which all but the most saintly of us can identify to some extent. If you like respectable protagonists, full of honour and virtue, neither book is for you.
Double Fault examines the extent to which eventualities are pre-destined by circumstance, just as Kevin did.
Double Fault is written with exactly the same flair, entertaining imagery and vibrant characterisation.
The difference between the two novels lies in plot. Double Fault has very little. It is simply an examination of a relationship and the emotional journey taken by a character. Don't wait for a twist or a jaw-dropping finale. If therein lies your love of Kevin, avoid Double Fault.

So much for The Bookseller: this Kevin fan WAS disappointed
I loved Kevin - well, insofar as I was shocked, terrified and mesmerised by it. But I could hardly believe that this was by the same author. For one thing it's laboured and horribly overwritten: metaphors stretched to breaking point, prose devices that do nothing but call attention to themselves and trite, flabby descriptive passages.
For another thing, it breaks the first rule of novel writing: show, don't tell. This does nothing but tell all the way through, relentlessly, the narratorial voice forever in your ear, never letting you discover anything for yourself, let alone become immersed in the story.
What's more, don't let anyone tell you it's 'not really' about tennis: it bloody well is, there are matches in there described serve-for-serve. If, like me, you don't know one end of a racket from the other (and don't care either), these sections are dull, dull, dull.
And finally, there's the creeping suspicion that Shriver, a shining light both for intelligent women's writing and also for the growing debate on motherhood, may turn out to be a one-trick pony: her protagonist, Willy, is an ambitious, driven woman[...]Sound familiar? She's even got a man's name, just like Lionel. With so much in common with both the author's own life, and last book, the tennis action seems to be the only thing in this book she's had to reach for - and it was to me the least interesting part of it.
While in the later parts of the book Shriver still displays an amazingly acute eye for the subtle daily bartering that goes on in most relationships, as well as an uncanny ability to pinpoint the moment the fulcrum of power shifts between two people, sadly it's too little, too late.
If, as seems likely, this examination of the paralysing fear of failure reflects Shriver's own fears in following up a phenomenon like Kevin, one can only hope she's written those worries out now, ready for a return to form with the next book.

Don't compare it to Kevin!
'Double Fault' is the sort of novel I would only consider reading after having read the blistering 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', and although it lacks the later novel's grippingly current premise, 'Double Fault' is still a damn good read. I think this may be overall testament to Shriver's accomplished talent as a fine writer of sophistocated fiction that cleverly osillates between high end literature, popular culture and just a sprinkling of 'chick lit'. All the right components are distilled in 'Double Fault' to make it distinctively Shriver's work: the relationship that starts off passionately fresh, and then deteriorates into bitter competition and spiteful revenge, the female protagonist's ambivalence towards motherhood and the succinct observations that border on the profound through the fact that they are actually quite mundane. Take for example Willy's difficult tennis match marred by the onset of her menstruation that causes a hormonal bout of diarrhoea. The imagery is horrible but somehow very true to life, a bit like Shriver's writing sometimes.