UNDERSPIN

A quietly devastating novel about the world of competitive table tennis.

Zhao’s debut novel opens with a memorial service: 24-year-old Ryan Lo is dead, and his parents are waiting for his coach, Kristian, who has never once been late, to arrive. “No way,” his mother thinks, “no way this is happening, no, how, no.” But it is, and from here the novel spins back in time, introducing one character after another whose lives touch Ryan’s both directly and indirectly—exhuming not just Ryan’s world as a top-ranked table tennis player but the culture of competitive athletics, where the line between abusing young athletes and motivating them too often blurs. The first four chapters—told from the perspectives of one of the boys that Ryan trains with as a kid, a table tennis referee, a girl who is a mediocre player, and a boy who quit the game quite early—are slow going, the plot weighed down by the dizzying number of characters introduced and not a lot of action. But patient readers will be rewarded as stray details from the opening return with new resonance and seemingly minor characters step into more important roles later on. Midway through the book, it becomes apparent that Zhao is a master of careful plotting and mystery—the real kind that cottons to morally complex situations. Kristian excels at coaching because he’s both kind and cruel, distant from his athletes and too intimate with them, wounded himself and wounding. It’s almost impossible to like him until he appears in his own voice in one of the final chapters. A poet of table tennis, Zhao turns this underappreciated sport into a nimbly described choreography of Tomahawk serves, switch-handed chops, and forehand and backhand loops.

A smart novel that examines the impact competitive sports have on kids without assigning winners or losers.