Doubles: A Novel

by Nic Brown

Overview

Slow Smith is in a slump. He's a professional tennis player stuck in his hometown, serving to an empty court. His wife is in a coma and he's afraid he's to blame. Left behind are her Polaroids, obsessive daily records of their life together. Meanwhile Kaz, Slow's lifelong doubles partner, is traveling the world while playing with someone new.

Then one afternoon his old coach Manny appears in a dumpy Fiat convertible and persuades Slow to get in. When they return to Forest Hills -- the site of a six-year winning streak -- they reunite with old friends who call up long-buried desires and reveal a secret that threatens to destroy Slow's marriage as well as his friendship with Kaz.

Slow just can't win -- and especially not back on the court. Turns out Kaz can't either. Theirs is a bond driven as much by odd habits as by shared life experiences -- a marriage not unlike the one rendered comatose -- and the only way to get their lives back on track is by playing together again.

At once hilarious and heartbreaking, Doubles serves up a tale of melancholy and redemption -- both on the court and off.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582435077
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	06/15/2010
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	8.22(w) x 5.68(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Nic Brown is the author of the novel Doubles and the story collection Floodmarkers, which was selected as an Editor's Choice by The New York Times Book Review. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Harvard Review, Glimmer Train, and Epoch, among many other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Columbia University, he has been the John and Renee Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi and an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado. Currently he is an assistant professor of English at Clemson University.

Editorial Reviews

Brown (Floodmakers) returns with another excellent ensemble character study, this one focusing on a group of friends and lovers radiating out from former tennis doubles partners Slow and Kaz. Slow holds himself responsible for the car accident hat put his wife, Anne, in a coma, and has since hung up his racket. After months of stopgap clerical work and depression, he is rescued by his eccentric and charismatic coach, Manny, who is trying to force Slow into a reunion with his former tennis partner, Kaz. So begins an ill-fated trip to New York, where Slow contemplates returning to the game and learns heartbreaking truths about his wife, his friends, and himself. The story has far more to say about love than tennis, but it ponders a changing sport as it transitions from the world of the impeccably mannered Arthur Ashe to bad boy Andre Agassi with the same care that it examines the inner life of its characters. The result is that rare sports novel with big heart and wide appeal. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Doubles

"Comedic sexual escapades, tender sciences of love and loss--this work from the author of the critically acclaimed Floodmarkers, a series of interconnected stories, has it all . . . This tale of contemporary life should resonant with a popular audience. Brown may be the John Updike for a new generation." --Library Journal (starred review)

"Hysterically funny." --Slate

"Brown (Floodmarkers) returns with another excellent ensemble character study . . . The story has far more to say about love than tennis, but it ponders a changing sport as it transitions from the world of the impeccably mannered Arthur Ashe to bad boy Andre Agassi with the same care that it examines the inner life of its characters. The result is that rare sports novel with big heart and wide appeal." --Publishers Weekly

"Brown's tale of Slow Smith's two marriages--to his doubles partner and to his wife--is funny, sad, and true. Part Irving, part Russo, Doubles is wacky, yet sharp, and ultimately, a moving riff on the many shapes of love." --Elisabeth Robinson, author of The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters

"In Doubles, Nic Brown not only reveals a slice of truth about life as a professional tennis player, he reveals a good bit of truth about life itself." --Stephen Huss, 2005 Wimbledon Men's Doubles Champion

"A strange and strangely lovely meditation on friendship and love and loss. Doubles is filled with razor-sharp observation and irreverent wisdom."--Kevin Moffett, author of Permanent Visitors

"This book generates a giddy energy that, after awhile, seems almost life-sustaining. Not loving it is impossible." --Matthew Vollmer, author of Future Missionaries of America

"From the superstitions to the heartbreak, Doubles is a refreshing and surprisingly precise take on the daily grind of the pro tennis tour. What an unbelievable book. I'd play with Slow Smith any day." --Tripp Phillips, 2006 U.S. Open Men's Doubles Semifinalist

"Rarely has a novel captured the absurdities and realities of life as a tennis player as well as Nic Brown has in Doubles." --Travis Parrott, 2009 U.S. Open Mixed Doubles Champion

"Doubles is a brawl. Rambunctious, hysterical, gripping . . . Love demands blood, so does tennis, and Nic Brown nails both." --Rosecrans Baldwin, author of You Lost Me There

From the Publisher

A professional tennis player learns just how hard the ball bounces. After gathering much praise for his first novel, Brown (Floodmarkers, 2009) fails to bring his A-game to this muddled, melancholic follow-up about a professional athlete. The protagonist and narrator, Slow Smith, was once one of the best tennis players in the world, a doubles champion with a 148-mile-per-hour serve and a faithful partner in his hell-raising childhood pal, Kaz. But 23 years later, Slow is a ghost of his former self, taking charity gigs in the wake of the terrible car accident that put his pregnant wife Anne in a coma. Once Slow learns that Kaz was sleeping with his wife, he starts to go a bit bonkers. In a rare opportunity for original humor, Slow challenges Kaz to a duel but recants. Wallowing in his worsening misery, he drinks too much, canoodles with two former classmates and makes jarring, dichotomous declarations that disrupt the flow of an already prickly story. "I felt alive, dangerous. Free," he says during a legendary hangover. Later, "I am a barbarian." Only during Slow's visits to Anne does his true nature emerge. Every day, Slow takes a Polaroid of his wife, maintaining her own habit of photographing him. "They all looked like someone who had at one point been my wife, had once been alive, had once kissed me and started to cry because she was afraid I wouldn't love her as much once the baby was born." While Brown clearly has a gift for language, the caustic dejection of his main man overwhelms the book's black humor, and Slow's potentially redemptive return to the sporting world is virtually an afterthought. By the time Anne is resurrected from her deep sleep, it's difficult to see what she ever might have seen in Slow, even in the ghostly echo of a thousand photographs. The line between comedy and tragedy is thin. This one swings hard but misses.

Kirkus Reviews