Teashop on the Moon

Double Fault: Between the lines

It’s difficult to mention Lionel Shriver’s Double Fault without first bringing up her Orange prize winning novel We Need to Talk about Kevin. For one, Double Fault was written before We Need to... and in the conversations between the characters, and in their portrayal, we see the first glimpses of the traits that would go into the making of Kevin, a teenager who kills fellow-students, and Eva, the mother who sees something wrong with her son the minute he comes out of her womb.
We Need to... addresses fears that most women would have felt at some point. I could identify with Eva’s brooding about giving up everything else in her life for a child (would she be able to take off to Africa?), or the reason why she later decides to have a child (if something were to happen to her husband, all she would have of him would be his soiled clothes). Even while mapping the story of a family beset with troubles that lie at one extreme, Shriver has brought in elements that are universal. Her writing competently conveys the chilling story of a mother whose worst nightmare does come true.
We Need to...’s brilliance is possibly one reason why I felt let down by Double Fault. This novel, the story of two tennis professionals who fall in love and get married, is cluttered with tennis metaphors that get steadily repetitive after the first instance. Willy, the heroine, is much like Eva, stubborn and selfish, constantly worrying whether her husband’s rankings will rise above hers’. When that eventually happens, she fumes and frets even more, doing silly things that could damage her career. It’s hard to attribute such reckless behaviour to Willy, who has only wanted to play tennis from the time she was five, but Shriver expounds on this theme with a panache that borders on the obscene. Indeed, this he-is-better-than-me type of musings takes up three-fourths of the book, making it odious and tiresome.
Yet, there are glimpses of what a powerful writer Shriver is even in this work. She convincingly brings out the differences in outlook between Eric, the husband, and Willy, towards tennis. As opposed to the fanaticism that Willy has always displayed about the game, Eric looks at tennis has one more thing he has to excel at — just like Math, for instance, or basketball. Willy is constantly surprised that someone who didn’t see himself as a tennis player as a child should go on to become a top player. It’s almost as if she’s a more credible player simply because she has wanted to do this forever.
Shriver is at her best when she lets slip a sentence or two that are more generic in nature. For instance, Willy’s anger about why women are paid less than men is presented briefly but effectively. Portrayed similarly is her resentment towards Eric, who as a man doesn’t have to bother about tampons or periods while playing tennis.
One of the most powerful and beautiful sentences in the book has Shriver describing the (perhaps mythical) faith people have in the institution of marriage. She writes, “Despite overwhelming evidence that both true love and domestic balance of power were myths, Willy still believed in the possibility of an ardent, lasting union between equals, much as many religious skeptics still kept faith in an afterlife because the alternative was too unbearable.” In sentences such as this, we recognise the author for what she is: a powerful and gutsy chronicler of our times, unsparingly narrating the stories that should be told and retold.

posted by Deepa @ 7:30:00 AM