This past spring, I had the pleasure of hearing Abraham Verghese read from his latest novel, The Covenant of Water at the Inprint Series in Houston. (Thanks, Deb Nance for giving me a ride into traffic-crazy H Town.) He was simply amazing, and that night I began a book of his, The Tennis Partner (1998), which had been on my TBR shelf for more than a year. Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone, is definitely one of my favorite novelists, and I looked forward to this novel with anticipation.

Overall, I was slightly disappointed, but I would still classify Partner as a very good read. Perhaps because it tended to be depressing, which the lives of drug addicts usually are, the story haunted me as Verghese unfolded “an elegy to friendship found and an ode to a good friend lost. ” (Boston Globe review) The writing was so edgy, so close to something that must be drawn from the author’s life experiences that I often found myself thinking I was reading a memoir or non-fiction book. It tells of David Smith, a medical student and recovering drug addict. The tennis games described were spot-on and progressed the plot along.The friendship between the two main characters is rich and complex, changing as David “spirals out of control.”

The tennis matches, described in detail, go on and on, as does the decent into David’s inevitable outcome. I would recommend this book especially to those who understand and love the game of tennis.