Sunday, September 02, 2007

"Tennis, Anyone?" by Kinky Friedman

From: Murder is My Racquet, ed. Otto Penzler. Mysterious Press, 2005.

A review of a tennis-themed story seems appropriate for Jimmy Connors's 55th birthday (which falls in the middle of the U.S. Open).

The engaging narrator of this story begins by saying he hasn't played tennis in years, but how he played the game revealed a lot about his character. A chess prodigy, he brought craft and deception to his tennis game, beating more athletic opponents with trickery.

He goes on to describe his first wife and how she pushed him to be a doctor. He describes falling out of love with his wife and being attracted to a nurse. Finally he describes his wife's "tragic" death from an incurable disease. All the while, readers come to realize how crafty, deceptive, indeed unreliable, the narrator is.

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