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When Lionel Shriver bagged the Orange prize last year for We Need to Talk About Kevin, it was a triumph both for her dedication (it was the 48-year-old American's seventh book, but her first to be published in Britain) and for the bravery of the independent publisher that took a punt on her talents. Shriver (right) didn't necessarily endear herself to the great British public - many found her portrait of a mother who openly disliked her son hard to stomach - but her determination to say things that aren't allowed won her respect.
It also won her back catalogue a second bite at the publishing cherry; and this year sees the first outing of her 1998 novel Double Fault (Serpent's Tail, £10.99) in British covers. It's not as obviously controversial as We Need to Talk About Kevin, but it's still pretty raw stuff. What's more, it must be one of
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A tennis tale from the Orange Prize winner is every bit as fierce as her breakthrough novel, says tim auld
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the few works of fiction to dramatise the world of competitive sport, in this case tennis, without being entirely lame and anticlimactic.
Ultimately, as Shriver points out in an author's note, the book's not so much about sport as marriage, and it's as sour a portrayal of that particular match as you'll find. In Wilhemena Novinsky she creates a suppurating wound of a character, whose jealousy, spite and tantrums challenge all the cliched norms of comfy womanhood. She's a shrew - but here's the rub, she's also hopelessly sympathetic.
At times Shriver could play her cards slightly closer to her chest - you don't have to be Hercule Poirot to know where it's all heading - but there's still a nasty shock waiting at the end, which should set angry tongues wagging. 
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POSTED APRIL 18, 2006
About Matilda by Bill Walsh
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
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