Double Fault [Hardcover]

Lionel Shriver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 14, 1997

An ardent middle-ranked professional tennis player, Willy Novinsky meets her match in Eric Oberdorf, the handsome rogue she drubs in a pick-up game in Manhattan's Riverside Park. Eric is charmingly gracious in defeat, and his casual confidence takes her in. 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.



Conjugal life starts well on the Upper West Side of New York. But animated shop talk and blissful love-making soon give 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 devastating spill. As Willy recuperates, her ranking plummets just as her husband becomes the upstart darling of the tennis circuit. Ultimately Eric plays in the U.S. 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.



Taut as match-point, Double Fault chronicles a marriage imploded by ambition. Just as Richard Yates exposed the dangers of traditional marriage in Revolutionary Road, Lionel Shriver reveals the hazards of a two career relationship. A brilliant novel about the price both men and women pay for prizing achievement over love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist Shriver offers this aptly named romance about two aspiring tennis pros who fall in love and marry only to come to blows on the court and subsequently at home. The narration by soap-opera actress Renée Raudman brings an air of theatricality to the occasionally stiff prose. Under her command, the story becomes an old-fashioned romance replete with one-dimensional characters (who actually become quite likable through Raudman's well-crafted tone) and overwrought scenarios that only serve to make listening all the more enjoyable. Fans of the genre will be giddy with delight, but those looking for a serious love story may be disappointed. A Harper Perennial hardcover. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Library Journal

A marriage wrecked on the shoals of ambition is the theme of Shriver's intriguing sixth novel (The Female of the Species, LJ 2/15/87). When 23-year-old Willy Novinsky meets and marries Eric Oberdorfer, she's a rising professional tennis star and he's a Princeton graduate who just plays for the love of the game. As Eric's tennis prowess increases and his ranking in the men's professional circuit rises, Willy suffers an injury and then a loss of confidence, both of which cause her rankings to plummet. Willy must decide whether her love for her husband is greater than her desire for a number-one ranking in women's tennis and how much she will sacrifice to achieve her goal. Shriver's challenge here is to convince the reader to empathize with Willy, despite her unattractive behavior and misguided choices. Shriver is a talented enough writer to win over some readers, but many will quickly lose patience with Willy and want to tell her to simply grow up and set her priorities straight. Recommended for public libraries.?Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (July 14, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385488300
• ISBN-13: 978-0385488303
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,394,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lionel Shriver is a novelist whose previous books include Orange Prize-winner We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Post-Birthday World, A Perfectly Good Family, Game Control, Double Fault, The Female of the Species, Checker and the Derailleurs, and Ordinary Decent Criminals.

She is widely published as a journalist, writing features, columns, op-eds, and book reviews for the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist, Marie Claire, and many other publications.

She is frequently interviewed on television, radio, and in print media. She lives in London and Brooklyn, NY.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written but depressing, September 26, 1997

By 

P. Meltzer (Wynnewood, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Double Fault (Hardcover)

The book is undoubtely well-crafted an written by a real "pro". The dialogue in particular was superb--almost too clever. However, while the NYT talks about what a "less ambitious" author might have done with the ending, I must be in the category of the "less ambitious reader" because the uplifting ending is exactly what I was hoping for. There was so much sadness and heartache in the book, that I was hoping for some relief from the unrelenting tension by book's end. Granted, perhaps the author is to be credited for her unstinting devotion to realism as opposed to a trite Hollywood ending, but it sure made for depressing reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not the author's best work., January 25, 2007

By 

misseckles "jjgreen17" (Drysdale, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Double Fault (Paperback)

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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Here is a talented writer but the bk is relentlessly grim., November 24, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Double Fault (Hardcover)

Admittedly, I checked this book out of the library b/c I really like to play tennis and I was curious about the book's use of the sport as metphor to explore (as the bkcover says)"marriage the ultimate sport." Only apparently, I wasn't fully prepared for the never-ending, morose, despiseable jealousies contained herein. I think Lionel Shriver is a talented writer, but that this book is abymally bitter, relentlessly bitter at every turn - to the point where I was ready to pitch the characters' marriage (&almost this book) long before the characters do. The main character, Willy Novinsky, is very unlikeable throughout (though I kept waiting in vain to find some redeeming quality), and I'm not sure she ultimately serves the rhetorical purpose of exploring the book's two-career marriage theme. Like being hammered over the head, the message here is suffocatingly clear. And though I might not agree with the author that modern marriage is inherently corrupt, I do believe no one in their right mind would want to spend another moment with these two. Like them, I found myself surely "beaten" by the end of this game's match.