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Loading... The Tennis Partnerby Abraham Verghese
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. SqueakyChu | Apr 3, 2009 |  1   This is the second book by Verghese and I liked it nearly as much as the first. The author confides in one of his medical students about his divorce while the student teaches him the game of tennis. Verghese has keen observations of love and friendship as his partner sinks further into a bad drug habit. (  )dickcraig | Oct 1, 2007 | Physician whose marriage fails meets medical student, who is an ex po tennis player with severe cocaine addiction (  )dka862 | Feb 25, 2007 |  0.111 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com (ISBN 0060931132, Paperback)What is it about sports that makes some men wax as mystical as a Castanedan Yaqui? In the hands of writers such as David James Duncan and Norman Maclean, the simple, repetitive motions of baseball, fly-fishing, and golf have acquired almost numinous significance. In The Tennis Partner, Dr. Abraham Verghese takes on his own fascination with tennis and comes up with as good an explanation as any: "In the way we controlled the movement of a yellow ball in space, we were imposing order on a world that was fickle and capricious. Each ball that we put into play, for as long as it went back and forth between us, felt like a charm to be added to a necklace full of spells, talismans, and fetishes, which one day add up to an Aaron's rod, an Aladdin's lamp, a magic carpet. Each time we played, this feeling of restoring order, of mastery, was awakened."For both Verghese and his tennis partner, a fourth-year medical student named David Smith, the game is a much-needed island of order in the midst of personal chaos. Both men are struggling to rebuild their lives, Verghese undergoing a painful divorce, Smith struggling with an intravenous cocaine addiction. For a brief, idyllic period, their friendship flourishes; Verghese mentors Smith in the examining room, while Smith, an Australian who competed briefly on the pro circuit, ends up Verghese's teacher on the court. But there are dark corners to David's personality, and under the mounting pressures of medical school and his increasingly complicated love life, these come to the fore. Even as he learns how to inhabit his new life, Verghese watches with horror as his friend relapses, dries out, then relapses again. The author of the powerful My Own Country, a chronicle of caring for AIDS patients in rural Tennessee, Verghese once again proves that the skills of a good doctor are strikingly similar to those of a good writer. Careful observation, compassion, restraint: these are the instruments Verghese uses to stunning effect in The Tennis Partner. A paean to the healing powers of tennis, this book is also a moving meditation on friendship, fatherhood, love, addiction, and the particular loneliness of physicians. --Mary Park (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:51 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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The book is fascinating in its honesty. It captures so well the author’s dedication to medicine, his love for tennis, the strength he musters in separating from his wife, his vulnerability in opening himself up to disappointment in friendship, and his understanding of the terrible cost of drug abuse. The easy, intelligent writing style of Dr.Verghese is beautiful to read. After finishing this book, one comes away with a feeling of knowing the author and a desire to hear more of what he has to say. (