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Bottom of the pile
9
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
2/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Scarlett Thomas
Publisher:
Counterpoint
Date:
January 4, 2022
At 41, Scarlett Thomas was a successful novelist and a senior academic. She'd quit smoking, gotten healthier, settled down in a lovely house with a wonderful partner. She'd had all the therapy. Then her beloved dog died. Her parents started to get sick right around the time she realized she was never going to be a mother herself. For the first time in her life, maintaining her ideal weight had become nearly impossible. She was supposed to grow up, but she didn't know how. So instead she decided to regress, to go back to the thing she'd loved best as a child but had inexplicably abandoned: tennis.
What The Reviewers Say
Intensity marks Thomas's beautiful memoir, which is a meticulously detailed, often darkly funny account of her hot pursuit of a dream deferred.
Readers should be prepared for pages detailing tennis matches—a basic understanding of the game and scoring is a prequisite—as well as irritation with Thomas in moments of bold self-absorption. At the same time, the author’s honesty is also what makes this memoir appealing, and Thomas’ insights into the world of amateur tennis are compelling. A capable memoir for those who love tennis and competition..
Her own coming-of-age story is written in the style of her novels, and the author’s characteristic acerbic wit shines through. The memoir will thus be a joy to Thomas’s fans but might be off-putting to those uninterested in her upper-middle-class lifestyle and her indulgence in jealousy, complaints, and criticism of self and others.
Thomas serves an ace of a memoir with this trenchant account about the pains of getting older.
