Double Fault

Can always digest a Shriver novel easily the writing flows, the insight is heavy, and I always know where they re going somewhere bad This is a terrible cover, btw you can t see how badly photoshopped the racket and ball are into the stock photo Doesn t seem like they had much faith for this novel second time around either Kinda funny in a novel that says that cathartic moments rarely drop into a career that s been slowly declining for many years, and on this, a re issued version, it says Orange [...]

I am rubbish at rigid reading lists Everything I read influences the next thing, in some way even if that s often just to act as a contrast This book had been languishing on the edge of my mighty bookshelf of unread possibilities since the week after I moved into my current flat, so that must have been April last year But after the philosophy wallowing and unfamiliar narrative voice of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, it got bumped up the list Lionel Shriver was what I really needed this week.It s [...]

As so many others have said, this book was not of the same caliber of Shriver s WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN or THE POST BIRTHDAY WORLD So, yes, from that standpoint, reading it was a disappointment But what if we think about it differently What if we think about it as Shriver s sixth novel, the one that came before KEVIN and POST BIRTHDAY What if we read it and look for those hints and they are certainly there, and in force of what it is to come from this writer Read that way, DOUBLE FAULT is fa [...]

This book is a powerful portrayal of the destructive nature of competitiveness I felt that it made me think deeply about the important difference between ambition and competition As such being ambitious is mainly directed at yourself, aiming at improving your last score for example or being keen to do your very best whatever the activity or task at hand Competition however appears to be directed at others, the importance to climb to the top, i.e in this case reach the top of the tennis champion [...]

I really think that Lionel Shriver is somewhat of an underrated writer I have read several of her books and she has excellent character development and is not afraid to tackle dense and conflictual subject matter This novel really focuses on the damage we do to each other in a marriage and the impact of two highly competitive people trying to have a relationship The level of egotistical selfishness in professional athletes in this novel was amazing Shriver writes beautifully and integrates well [...]

It occurs to me that the world of professional sport is one that has been relatively unexplored by novelists Perhaps that is because sport is its own drama and there is little to be gained from writing about fictional sporting contests when one can watch the real thing There s David Peace s imaginings of the management careers of Brian Clough and Bill Shankly, and I can t really think of much else Actually, that s not quite true There s the whole of Dick Francis oeuvre for starters And when I wa [...]

Spoilers ahead I found it hard to rate this book on one hand it did have a compelling have to finish quality , if a bit voyeuristic in nature, on the other, it has patches of purple prose, notably the love sex scenes Not many of those thank goodness, with their shattering orgasmic noises though these are his , for a change And some strange, incomprehensible sentences These may have been Kindle errors of course The sentences that is, not the orgasmic noise And of course ,as many reviwers have alr [...]

I am not a big fan of tennis, so the details about professional tennis and ranking and rules bored me somewhat It s a good book, about marriage and competition, but the tennis setting just wasn t quite for me.

Really great psychological insight into Willy and her self hatred I know someone like that, and it really put action into words mellifluously She basically self sabotages everything in her life because it s better to be a loser than mediocre, or, to be great, but not as good as her husband As a loser, she gets sympathy And as other reviewers have said, Double Fault manages monotonous day to day detail without ever being boring The details of opening mail or going to a restaurant or having a mari [...]

I read this book because I immensely enjoyed two of Lionel Shriver s other books The Post Birthday World and We Need to Talk About Kevin Usually when I find a book that I like, I immediately try to find other books by the author and read them Although I enjoyed this book, I didn t find it as intriguing or involving as her others And, yes, the author is a woman I just assumed it was a man when I began The Post Birthday World and kept thinking This guy can really write from a woman s point of view [...]

I picked up this book because I am a huge tennis fan Apart from its tennis theme, almost everything else about the book is pretty terrible I came across the existence of this book when I read an article in the Guardian featuring six writers on the subject of failure Lionel Shriver was one of those six writers She wrote about publishing Double Fault to almost no attention, including abysmal sale figures After reading the book, I can t say that I find that surprising The biggest flaw of the book i [...]

3,5.Por muito tempo fiquei na vontade de ler Lionel Shriver, cheguei a comprar quase todos os livros dela num mpeto de ler tudo de uma vez, mas tentei come ar dois deles e depois de alguns cap tulos me senti mais cansado do que se tivesse passado uma noite inteira lendo sem parar Deixei de lado por um tempo e agora resolvi que j tava mais do que na hora de parar de mimimi Meu n vel de maturidade para a escolha de qual livro come ar Dupla falta tinha mais di logos uhasuahsuh Partindo do par metro [...]

I read Shriver s previous novel We Need to Talk About Kevin which although a difficult read due to its subject matter, was extrememly well written I have to say that Double Fault is equally of such a high standard This is a much comfortable story although it still challenges the reader to draw their own conclusions and observations The leads are poles apart in upbringing Willy comes from a Jewish family, her father an english teacher and failed author Her mother trained as a dancer but gave it [...]

This should be a movie to clarify, this SHOULD NOT be a book It s strange that the same woman who produced We Need to Talk About kevin could write this badly The conflict is intereting, a tennis pro who obsesses over the sport meets her match ha ha when she marries a rising star outranks her eventually While that can be interesting, the characters are not they fall as flat as the screen they should be displayed on, where its approprioate to have characters who are really symbols and long monolog [...]

This was a good book, but pretty heavy I think Willy is one of my least favourite female protagonists EVER She was so selfish and self absorbed that I really struggled with her And I think there were editorial errors in my issue, which is what ultimately made me give it three stars.But even though Willy annoyed me, this was definitely a book that will stay with me, and one that makes you think, which I always enjoy I think I would have enjoyed it even if I wasn t having such a terrible time at [...]

Willy female has dreamed of being a professional tennis player for her entire life and has steadily worked her way up the rankings She meets and marries Eric, who decided two years ago that he wants to learn tennis and is a scrappy but proficient player But, after they marry, he enjoys a meteoric rise and, almost at the same time, Willy suffers a career threatening injury Willy is plunged into depression and wonders who she is if she does not have tennis Although I couldn t relate to the tennis [...]

I am a fan of Lionel Shriver butWhen bad editing can ruin a book for youSloppy editing can drive me slightly nuts In this book, but became hut, unsurprising became unsurprinsing one character Axel became Axe on Pg 423 then reverted to Axel at the end of Pg 425 and no, it wasn t a nickname , commas appeared randomly I found simply myself waiting for the next mistake.The blurb says this novel uses tennis simply as a metaphor well, it was a pretty big metaphor I got a bit lost in the tennis ranking [...]

There are but two strikes in a tennis point A marriage typically has many, but in most there are a finite, if unknown, number of opportunities to win or lose Double Fault explores a relationship using that sports metaphor With two highly competitive, driven individuals harnessed as the team, neither love nor marriage seems to have much chance of surviving their separate interests and egos The novel successfully mimics the sport, a match where unforced errors as often as power serves or cross cou [...]

Having loved if you can love a book about such a harrowing topic We Need to Talk About Kevin, I was keen to read another book by the same author It took me a long time to be gripped by this novel about a marriage between two competitive tennis players, but I was The protagonist cannot separate herself from her tennis ranking and when her naturally gifted husband outranks her, she begins to fall apart Shriver seems to have an amazing understanding of how jealousy can destroy that which it loves a [...]

I can t say that I hated this book, but that is only because I was in Peace Corps and read everything from The Warren Commission s Report to books where cats solved mysteries However, everything that needs to be said about this book can be summed up in a sentence about a couple s first time having sex with each other It reads something like, But it was too late to worry about what she was getting into because something was getting into her.

Somewhat depressing read dealing with the potential destructive depths of competitiveness in relationships set against the backdrop of tennis The lead character is convincing but her counterpart is a somewhat unbelievably high achiever in whatever field he chooses to try no wonder she finds it hard to take when he overtakes her in the points table Ultimately they both lose unnecessarily so.

Sv r bok att betygs tta, men Lionel Shriver r som vanligt fantastisk Mer tankar p bloggen elilaserochskriver omskakanReview in Swedish elilaserochskriver omskakan

Very readable but not in the same league as we must talk about Kevin

I don t know if I would say I enjoyed this book, but I did find it compelling I was very interested to see how it would end and that kept me reading I know a great deal about tennis, and I thought the tennis was very well done, very believable I enjoyed Lionel Shriver s style of writing, which is dense and literary It s the characters of Willy and Eric that I found so frustrating by the end.This book isn t about depression, yet Willy s reactions and actions, and how she describes the world at la [...]

I found Willy Novinsky to be, hands down, the most unlikeable character in all of fiction that I ve encountered Typically, there are unlikeable characters, but they re written in such a way which either makes them relatable, or that their unlikeability was part of the role that they played e.g in character development Her husband Eric could, quite literally, do nothing right If they played a game, if he let her win he was insulting her, if he beat her he was outmuscling her at her own game I rea [...]

I have fallen in love with so many books that bored me rigid in the first couple of chapters, so have learned that perseverance really does pay off For this reason I can count on one hand how many books have gone into my Room 101 I would also like to say, for the record, the I love Lionel Shriver s writing and was in awe of Kevin and even enjoyed Post Birthday despite the terrible dialogue But this.It would be so wrong to give anything like a full and detailed review because I barely got through [...]

Wow, never have I been so angry at a character and disappointed in a book Such depression, I wanted Willy to off herself so many times Not only does she ruin her own life because of her idiotic, useless inability to get it together, but she ruins the life of the only person who loved her It can t get any retarded Slumps are mental and she was so flawlessly weak that she basically died during the accident Lack of courage, lack of character and a shitty attitude get you nowhere in life, this is [...]

i would give it one star, but i quit with 30 pages to go so i have to give it the benefit of the doubt i liked it a lot initially, finding some parts of willy s experience very personally relatable which was also kind of horrifying because she is not appealing at all then the whole book jumped the shark and it was all just too much

If the main character wasn t such a deplorable, egotistical, waste of writing this book might have been enjoyable as at least it was well written and impeccably researched I just had absolutely no reason to care and was usually bored to tears by the same argument being reenacted between two people repeatedly to no avail

Not a patch on the other Lionel shriver I ve read Big Brother This was very intense and neither character very likeable.