From the critically acclaimed author of “My Own Country” comes a riveting and forceful memoir of a doctor coming to personal terms with love and loss through the death of his best friend and tennis partner.Amazon.com Review
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The Tennis Partner: A Doctor’s Story of Friendship and Loss
I am amazed that someone can consider type of relationship discribed here to be one of very close friends….the book title more aptly displays the depth of feeling, in my opinion. This book might be enjoyed by someone who adores tennis; as one who has no specific interest in it, those long segments of the book have no appeal…they might as well be discussing bowling…anything physical. This allows the writer to skirt issues instead of allowing close human interaction. I am amazed that what most women would consider an aquaintance, this writer considers to be a close (only?) friend. I think he has emotionally arrested development, though he seems kind, and most likely is an able physician.
Rating: 1 / 5
If life’s been a bowl of cherries, but you’re curious about the pits, read this. I’ve played tennis for 40 years, seen plenty of addiction and mental illness, but found this book — though well-written — in the end, simply depressing.
Rating: 3 / 5
Whether or not you have a background in medicine, this book will draw you in and keep you interested. The only parts that may seem a bit tedious to run through are some of the tennis sequences. This may seem odd coming from a tennis player, but reading about tennis is like watching grass grow. However, the sequences do bring other parts of the book together, and they are tolerable.
My only other issue is Verghese’s constant romanticizing of El Paso, neighboring Juarez, and their inhabitants. Having lived here for almost three years (*and* having worked as a physician in the hospital he mentions in his novel), I can promise you that the innocence, the bluster, and the graciousness of his side characters is almost completely fictional.
I don’t think it would have detracted from the book to portray the city and the people more realistically.
Rating: 3 / 5
I had looked forward to this book, expecting an inciteful analysis of friendship and drug addiction. I loved “My Own Country”, and lookd forward to enjoying this book as much. I was sorely disappointed; irritated by travel book descriptions of El Paso, smug case histories of patients, egocentric self-analysis of the author’s relationship with others. I found little to explain WHY the two men were friends, outside of being tennis buddies, and almost no incite to the problems faced when a friend has a drug addiction. Perhaps my expectations were too high, you can’t always hit a home run.
Rating: 2 / 5
I found “The Tennis Partner” disappointing because ultimately Dr. Verghese has little insight into his friend’s heart or mind. The use of his friend’s life as a taking-off point seems exploitative. The repetitive passages on Dr. Verghese’s self-described insightful diagnostic methods and his obsessive meanderings about tennis strike me as simply egocentric. That the book derived from journal musings is all too clear. It is marred as well by some writing errors, for example, the feeling that his head was caught “in a vice.” It does serve as a warning about the misshaping of the person that can take place in the medical pressure cooker, but I believe not, ironically, in the way the author intended.
Rating: 2 / 5