41-love : on addictions, tennis, and refusing to grow up

41-love On addictions, tennis, and refusing to grow up

Scarlett Thomas

Book - 2021

"After winning her local tennis club tournament, Scarlett Thomas, 41-year-old novelist, decided to dedicate a year of her life to tennis. At 12, Scarlett discovered her father was not the punk photographer who'd brought her up, but was in fact the man she previously knew as her godfather. At 14, she was sent to Mexico to connect with her terrifying grandmother. She was sent to a conservative boarding school in the middle of nowhere, her only link with the outside world was movie-night each Saturday where they watched dance films that usually involved rebellion and teenage pregnancy. Fast forward a few years, and at 41 Scarlett was a successful novelist and a senior academic. She'd given up smoking, got fit, settled down. She ...had a lovely house and a wonderful partner. She'd had all the therapy. Then her beloved dog died, and she couldn't get over it. Of her three fathers (she'd acquired a step-father at 10), one died of a heroin overdose and the other two were diagnosed with cancer. Her sister-in-law become pregnant at the same time that she realized that she really was never going to become a mother. For the first time in her life, remaining a size 8-10 was hard, verging on 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. As well as being a compelling story of addiction and breakdown, 41-0 is a hilarious and disturbing look at tournaments, cheap hotels, small-town tennis clubs and the characters that frequent them. And Scarlett knows she's not the only person to have wondered whether, if you throw enough money and time and passion at something, you can make your dream come true. Answer: nope. But you can certainly die trying"--

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Subjects
Thomas, Scarlett.
Novelists, English > 21st century > Biography.
Autobiographies.
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
Berkeley, California : Counterpoint 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Scarlett Thomas (author)
Edition
First hardcover edition
Physical Description
361 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9781640094765
  • Prologue
  • The Indoor Tennis Centre
  • Leicester
  • Ragdale Hall
  • The Indoor Tennis Centre Open
  • Wolverhampton
  • Bath
  • Sutton
  • The Canterbury Open
  • Nottingham
  • The Walmer Open
  • Seniors' Wimbledon
  • Postscript
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

Novelist Thomas (Oligarchy, 2019) delivers a memoir about competitively taking up a sport at an age when most players would be considered in their twilight years. While somewhat of a tennis novice as a girl, Thomas dismissed the sport for years until, suddenly, at age 41, she's convinced that she can find that same level. She can't. But that doesn't stop her from shelling out lots of money for private lessons and high-end gear while she abandons family and work in favor of tennis. Her obsession with her ranking, nutrition, and fitness leads her down a path filled with body pains, self-doubt and lots of tears. 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.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Novelist Thomas (Oligarchy) serves an ace of a memoir with this trenchant account about the pains of getting older. When she gave herself a tennis lesson for her 41st birthday, she saw it as "my last chance to do the thing I love, the thing that I was always best at, as well as I can." She spiritedly recounts dedicating her sabbatical year to tennis and the matches she played against lithe younger women ("tall, slim, pert, slightly sulky young people"), the politics of coach-switching, and her fixation on optimizing her diet, exercise, and meditation routines. The obsessive present is informed by Thomas's past, which includes a rotating cast of father figures and a traumatic abortion in her young adulthood. As Thomas rose through the ranks of over-40 ladies' singles tournaments, her mental and physical health fractured, eventually causing her to step back from tennis entirely, but not before making it to Seniors' Wimbledon. Though her wit is entrancing, the most striking characteristic of Thomas's narrative is its refusal to end with "what I learned" enlightenment. Instead, she writes, "I have now pretty much made peace with the fact that I was a bit of an idiot in 2014." This window into midlife desire is cathartic, amusing reading for anyone who's wanted desperately to win. Agent: Daniel Mandel, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Dec.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The British novelist tells of how a midlife return to competitive tennis turned into a "cursed dance" that unexpectedly derailed her life. At 41, Thomas had solid career prospects at her university, a stable relationship, and a just-finished new novel. Yet all she really wanted was "another trophy" to affirm that she was still the "prodigy, sort of," who walked away from tennis at age 14. "Tennis was my first love," writes the author. "Every other sport I ever played was with my eyes closed and the duvet stuffed in my mouth so I didn't shout out its name, the name of my real passion, my soulmate." When her wealthy paternal grandmother deemed the author "common, as well as uncouth and unsophisticated and weird," Thomas was sent away to a posh private school. Soon, her intense desire to prove her tennis skills transformed winning games into losing ones. When she finally returned to the game again in the summer of 2013, Thomas discovered that tennis was more than just a social and athletic hobby; it soon controlled her life and thoughts. For the next year, the author pursued the sport relentlessly, winning trophies and local recognition. Yet her wins felt meaningless; she only wanted more. Her own harshest critic, Thomas eventually reached the semifinals at Seniors' Wimbledon, then learned she was ranked "131 in the world for over-40 women." Soon after, she suffered from burnout, "like a moth sizzling in the plastic tray of a fluorescent light, because I could not keep away from the brightness and the flames." With its obsessive attention to such details as tennis equipment, attire, and events on the court during matches, much of the story is tedious and often overshadows the more compelling emotional and socio-economic aspects underlying the author's brutal need to win. Ultimately, Thomas hints at rather than consciously explores the reasons behind her fall from tennis grace, and the book's appeal may be limited to those who share the author's love of tennis. An interesting but flawed narrative experiment. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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