Customer Rating:  
Summary: Tahitians would never have invented tennis...
Comment: So says Max, coach to diminutive, feisty tennis wunderkind Wilhelmina. Well, maybe not but they did invent surfing. That aside, Lionel Shriver's pacey novel set in the fiercely competitive, ratings-driven world of professional tennis heaps cliché upon cliché as `Willy' marries Ivy League Adonis Eric and ungraciously engineers her own downfall. Unfortunately, despite ample evidence that Shriver is a good writer Double Fault suffers from insipid characterisation and crude, bickering banter between two self-obsessed prima donnas. I suspect that the author has written better. If not, then she is sacrificing her skills for big sales. Airport fodder.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Interminable
Comment: Loved Kevin but was very disappointed with this book. Characters lack credibility and the whole thing is dragged out to an interminable length - what was her editor thinking? There's not much of a story unless you are really, really, really interested in the minutiae of tennis.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Avoid unless you have trouble falling asleep at night
Comment: Having read and loved 'We need to talk about Kevin' quite a few years ago I had been looking forward to other books by Shriver. I quite liked 'The post-birthday world' even though some reviewers said it was boring so thought I would give this one a try even though I had heard bad things about it. I wish I hadn't bothered. I think she actually wrote this book before Kevin and obviously didn't have a lot of success with it, probably because it is rubbish.
The reason I gave 2 stars instead of 1 is because at the start I thought it showed signs of promise and I thought I might get into it but it got more and more boring as it progressed. One thing about Shriver is she doesn't seem to write likable characters. I didn't like any of them in Kevin but it was completely absorbing anyway because the subject manner was interesting and the characters were at least believable even if you wouldn't exactly let them in your house. In 'Double Fault' I just wanted to slap all the characters especially the main one, Willy. And in this case there was no interesting plot, it is basically just a series of tennis games in mind numbing detail. I actually think tennis is alright, football is my main love but I will watch Wimbledon when it's on, but it really doesn't make a good subject for a book.
Basically the book is about Willy who meets Eric and marries him. They both play tennis and it shows how their differing careers affect their marriage. It is about the jealousy you can feel when someone close to you has success, which is even harder when you have the same dreams. I understand these feelings but they are not very interesting as it just comes across as whiny, self involved, self pity, which it is, and the book becomes extremely repetitive. As well as Willy being a massive pain Eric is extremely irritating and his family are worse. Willy's coach Max is about as fascinating as cardboard. The worst thing of all is probably the dialogue. Hugely unrealistic and often laughable, especially the flirting between Eric and Willy. They talk like they are in a play at the theatre with ridiculous levels of drama, exposition and endless paragraphs that people just don't say to each other. The sex scenes are pretty hilarious too, I can't take seriously the idea of people having sex on a tennis court. I would think that would be pretty uncomfortable.
My advice is if you have read Kevin then steer clear of this one because it will only disappoint, and if this was going to be the first Shriver book you read please don't because it will put you right off.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A long rally
Comment: I read this after I read We Need to Talk about Kevin, not realising it had been written some time ago. The ability to write at length about very little is a gift Lionel Shriver definitely has, and you can see its development in the later books. This one was disappointing, but please don't let it put you off her other books, which are great.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointing
Comment: As an avid reader, I'm always excited to discover a new author, and after reading We Need To Talk About Kevin, I couldn't wait to read Lionel Shriver's other work. The old saying goes that everyone has one novel in them, but in Ms Shriver's case, I think it is only one. I can't believe that the one-dimensional Double Fault and the profound and shocking Kevin came from the same pen. I am a loyal reader who always finishes what she starts (and re-reads favourite books over again) but this book's lack of even one character to root for actually inspired me to throw it across the room in sheer frustration! Very disappointing.
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