I suppose at this point I just have to admit that TJR’s storytelling  is not my favourite flavour. This is yet ANOTHER story about a self-centred main character, though this time the narcissism is masked beneath borderline socially-acceptable athletic ambition. However, the journey to becoming an ‘almost kind’ human being was worth enduring two-thirds of the ‘this-then-that’ sports report slash novel. If you have the time. Always great writing from Jenkins Reid, rarely a story that appeals to my preferences.

I’m not big on biographies, but still, I’d much rather have read a biography on Serena or Venus, Sharapova, Billie Jean King, or even the younger Naomi Osaka or Bianca Andreescu…This novel was like imitation meat to the real thing.

The main character is an angry whiner. She has her reasons, of course, and they are legitimate to an extent, but she is wretched to everyone—including her father. She is a self-aggrandising bully, though she tries to hide her bullying mannerisms behind a ‘drive to win’ at her sport—as if that’s honourable. Her attitude is highlighted as unsavoury throughout the novel—but that point is harped on ad nauseam and the horse is flayed bloody by the halfway mark. Jeesh. We get it: she’s an arsehole. But nobody wants to read 200 pages of someone being a jerk to everyone and justifying their crap behaviour. Do they? (Well, I’m wrong, cos apparently people love this stuff and it’s only me who doesn’t…)

Oh, here’s a positive point—I liked this quote: ‘honour is just ego’ wrapped in a social context.

Carrie is self-critical, self-absorbed, stubborn, and a perfectionist who is terrified of failure—which is another way of saying she thinks she’s better than everyone. That sort of pride is unattractive and off-putting… but there was going to be a lesson here somewhere near the end; you could smell it like B.O. in an ice hockey locker room.

I guess there’s a section of the population that might be able to relate to someone like Carrie Soto... As usual with TJR’s novels, I feel like I’m the wrong target age, wrong socio-economic bracket, wrong political leaning for her writing, and I certainly read much (tomes of pages) outside my own ‘cultural box’ (define that, if you can) and I appreciate mountains of stuff I shouldn’t be able to relate to, but I consistently have a difficult time stomaching the unrelenting justification of egotistical behaviour in a main character who won’t forgive, won’t say sorry, and revels in her own ego unable to see beyond the walls of her own world.

Current social issues are dropped in throughout to meet the industry requirements, but they seem passing or forced, and mostly insignificant. A mere nod to some real life struggles.

A third of the novel, in scattered bits, is play-by-play description of select parts of a tennis match narrated by Carrie, as she gloats at the little wins and is a terribly sore loser at the losses.

In some places, this feels like a dig, a not-so-subtle mockery of a certain tennis player’s incredible life (dad-coach, interpersonal conflicts, no-surrender attitude—magnified 10-fold and exaggerated to hyperbolic extremes) minus the quality education, elegance and dignity and international diplomacy displayed by that unnamed real-live player the fictional Soto sometimes mirrors.

I suppose some of this is about sports psychology. I suppose some of it is meant to be a subtle analysis of parental pressure, and holding onto things that are long past, and not being able to accept failure…It was mildly enlightening in the father-daughter relationship parts, and I might watch a film of it—oh but wait! No. I’ve already seen King Richard, from which this seems ripped and doctored…

I admit, Javier Soto is the best part. It’s almost redeeming when Carrie shows love for her father, but for the most part, she is a stubborn child who shuns the life lessons he offers and laughs in the face of his learned wisdom, preferring her own narrow knowledge.

Eventually, the novel took a turn for the better: Carrie gained a modicum of depth, developed a touch of real character, and despite a life of being an awful person to everyone around her, she finally made 3 friends at 37 years old. Well done.

The best parts:

It worked its way up from the 2 stars it was aggravating out of me until 75% of the way in, to 3 stars at its butt-end. Sorry TJR-lovers, I’m not a fan, and as this is my fourth (fifth?) trip down a Jenkins Reid trail, and as she certainly stirs subject matter for discussion groups, I believe I have to admit that her upper-crust settings and ego-hungry characters, her choice of particular voice, and the manner in which she executes her fictional plots, are not ever going to appeal to my tastes—eclectic as they are. No doubt, she is a fantastic writer with skills that draw you in, I just thoroughly dislike her stories, her settings, and her characters.