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.
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