Long on the human-interest angle, trivial as a piece of tennis writing.
The actual playing of tennis becomes a sideshow in this gossipy profile of the women’s pro tour, from Sports Illustrated writer Wertheim.
Years of uninspired play by “moonballing baseliners” on the women’s tennis tour was eclipsed, Wertheim posits, when a cohort of electrifying young players sent a considerable buzz through the circuit. Burning bright was Venus Williams, who took both the US Open and Wimbledon as well as both gold medals at the Sydney Olympics. And as an African-American, she and her enormously talented sister Selena blew fresh air through the musty precincts of the Women’s Tennis Association. Martina Hingis, Lindsay Davenport, and a host of newcomers were also playing numinous tennis, with Monica Seles and Jennifer Capriati making comebacks. Yet Wertheim is primarily concerned with the hype, the money, the glamour, and the dirt as he follows these players and others through the 2000 tour. (Which is a shame—when he lets his tennis writing peek through, such as in describing the US Open, it shines.) What we learn from these pages is that Hingis is “an Uzi of candor” who needs an image consultant; that Seles is “an unregenerate capitalist”; that Anna Kournikova “has a magnetic force field that can pull grown men out of their orbit”; the earthshaking news that women’s professional tennis has deplorable dads and a whole lot of bed-hopping; that the players are “sassy, brassy divas” who are “ready for the catwalk.” Of course, there are also the Williams sisters, tennis’s “urban legend,” but Wertheim lets “the tennis father from outer space,” Richard Williams (famed for “blowing smoke in all directions”), dominate the story. Unfortunately as well, Wertheim is given to snickering inanities such as “men’s tennis could use some Viagra,” not to mention the title.
Long on the human-interest angle, trivial as a piece of tennis writing.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-019774-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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