“My ambition has long felt oppressive. It is not a joy—it is a master that I must answer to, a smoke that descends into my life, making it hard to breathe. It is only my discipline, my willingness to push myself harder, that has been my way through.”
Carrie Soto was raised by her father, a former tennis player, to become the greatest player in the world. She was singularly focused on this goal, a ruthless competitor who made no friends and absolutely hated losing. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she rose to the top of the game, winning a record 20 Grand Slam titles, becoming #1 in the world, before retiring.
Known as “The Battle Axe” while competing, she lives a fairly lonely existence, with few friends and no real romantic relationships. But in the mid-1990s, as she watches a new women’s tennis star’s meteoric rise, Carrie starts to get hungry to play again. And when this player, Nicki Chan, ties Carrie’s record of 20 grand slams, Carrie decides it’s time for a comeback. But can she play the kind of tennis she needs to at age 37? And can she win one more Grand Slam to take the record?
Taylor Jenkins Reid has long been one of my favorite authors, and I have been eagerly anticipating this book for months. It’s a fascinating, emotional, totally compelling story, and what impressed me so much was that she created an entire world of 1970s-1990s tennis; she didn’t just drop Carrie into the middle of the real players.
I absolutely devoured this book and now I have to wait perhaps a year for her next!!
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