The Tennis Partner - Abraham Verghese -------------------------- 3.5 Stars

The Tennis Partner has been on my list to read for quite a while. Thanks to the free time allotted from Winter Break, I finally had a chance to enjoy this book. While it was a heavy read, it turned out to be a meaningful and worthwhile book.

If you are not familiar, this book is about an impressive doctor in the El Paso area who befriends a former tennis pro aspiring to also be a doctor. Through their shared love of tennis, they get to know each other more closely, and it becomes clear that one of them has a dark secret.

While the book is dated (it often refers to the challenges presented by AIDS), the themes and challenges are relevant. The author is an excellent writer writer who has a playful, lyrical, and when needed, serious style that moves forward the story through some slower parts. He also does a superb job of personalizing his experiences through the book and displays his vulnerabilities at multiple times.

Ultimately, the book is at its best when the author shows depth in his areas of expertise. Whether it be the detail and specificity with which he highlights an exciting tennis rally, or sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of internal medicine, the story is buoyed by those exciting passages that allow the reader to share real depth with a master in two different, but oddly relatable fields. Relatedly, near the tail-end of the book, he really hits his stride waxing thoughtfully about the existential nature of our lives. This is certainly put into great focus after learning more about his tennis partner. For me, this was the best part of the book.

A few drawbacks of this book. It can be slow. While he does have an engaging style, I found the detailing of the scenery repetitive and unnecessary.  And while I enjoyed the medical jargon and expertise he shared, it occasionally became tiresome without any background knowledge (at least for me). I also found the book heavier than I realized. As I knew that it was more than simply about tennis, I didn't realize the depth of the material this book would approach. Things like drug addiction, sex addiction, suicide, friendship, and a few others deep subjects are littered throughout the book. While the author does a super job approaching them, it's a lot to take on. Finally, I found the lack of depth about his tennis partner's character frustrating. Potentially this was done to be as accurate as possible to his experience with this person but it made the book, and the ending especially, more difficult to understand.

On a whole, this is a very strong and meaningful book. I would recommend doing a bit more digging about the themes and challenges offered prior to reading it, but if you are looking for a meaningful story about addiction, life, and tennis, this should be a welcome read. 

The Flight Attendant - Chris Bohjalian ------------------------ 2 Stars

The Flight Attendant is a very popular book that has recently been made into a dark comedy series of the same name on HBO. I figured I'd enjoy due to the large amount of positive feedback and interesting plot. Unfortunately, for me, it was a huge flop. Let me do my best to explain.

To start with the positive, this book has an interesting and somewhat engaging plot. A flight attendant wakes up in a hotel room with a dead (more or less) stranger next to her and does not know (or remember) what happened to him. A pretty good set up the reminded me a lot of The Girl on the Train (review here) or The Woman in the Window (review here). All have a similar formula - something crazy and unexpected happens and the unreliable narrator is an alcoholic type woman.

This actually might be my first problem with the book. Clearly this type of narrative plot has been used before (and, as I believe, much better) with past novels. Perhaps if this was the first time I had seen this device used, it would have been more engaging. However, the lack of plot originality was a problem.

Another problem I occasionally have with fictional books is how realistic they may or may not be. While I know this book is fictional and not real, the book could be told in a way that is based in reality or is more fantasy. While this book makes clear it attempts to base itself in a reality of the world we live in, I found numerous things occur that seemed unrealistic. Perhaps, most notably, the work of the main character's lawyer. While I am not a lawyer, I feel like I have enough experience with them to know that they tend to be professional and focused. Not drama maniacs who curse often and belittle their clients. The lawyer in this book is where I felt the novel "jumped the shark" from being based in reality to something else.

Finally, and perhaps most frustrating, the book is simply slow and not engaging. In the other novels mentioned, the action was packed from start to end and the exposition left the reader wanting more. Not here; rather, I was shocked at how dozens of pages could go by without anything noteworthy happening (other than the author talking about the significant anxiety the main character had over and over). I feel like some of the other challenges could have been overlooked had the story been more engaging. Again, it just seemed like it was following an overused script that I've seen too many times.

I'm sure this book is well liked by many others. Perhaps I just have a skewed and too negative a viewpoint. So, you should it read it and decide for yourself. However, if you do, please be wary of my concerns and don't be surprised if you are under engaged by this novel.