Overview
Austin Sinclair and Jack Winston grew up together on the poor side of town - one quiet, sober and tenacious; the other a reckless charmer always seeking a challenge. And they shared a love for tennis that forged an unlikely bond - and incited a fierce rivalry - between them. Chancing upon the game as boys, they mastered it, each nurturing secret dreams of fame, wealth, women and glory on the championship circuit. Then adult life took them in different directions. Jack started off badly, with a too-early marriage and child, followed soon after by divorce. But a silver tongue and a taste for the good things brought him success. Austin, too, was successful, but only after laboring long and hard - as patience, persistence and devotion to the almighty work ethic ultimately won him the "right" woman, and an important position as pillar of his bank and his affluent Florida community. Jack and Austin haven't spoken in years. Now they are grown men - mature, accomplished and middle-aged. And a chance reunion in a crowded restaurant results in a friendly, fateful invitation to compete once again at Austin's exclusive tennis club. But from the first serve on an impeccable clay court to the final, breathless point of a truly unforgettable match, unresolved resentments and tensions will determine the pace of the play. For every lob and backhand, every point surrendered or won, brings with it serious questions about the past and the choices made. With each set comes potentially explosive revelations about love, money and the nature of competition. And by match's end, Austin and Jack will know more about themselves, their game and their friendship than they knew at the onset - and their lives will have changed forever.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
A pair of former tennis rivals thrash out some of the questions and conflicts of middle age on the tennis court in Mawe's predictable first novel. Successful banker Austin Sinclair and his boyhood friend Jack Winston, an attractive yet financially shaky yacht dealer, grew up together on the poor side of a small Florida town. Austin was obedient and socially awkward, the pale, tongue-tied opposite of Jack, who was dashing and darkly handsome, but the pair shared a love of tennis. At the peak of their friendship and their games, they were the top-ranked Juniors in Florida, but after high school their lives veered in opposite directions. At midlife, Austin is chafing under the burdens of a stale marriage, spoiled kids and the pressures of being an upstanding member of his community. Jack, in contrast, is paying the price for being a lifelong rebel. Rejecting college, he parlayed his natural charm and good looks into a glamorous career and, now, a passionate love for a beautiful woman, though three broken marriages and other false starts have buried him in debt and worries. Austin wishes he had taken more chances and lived closer to the edge. Jack envies his rival's wealth and stability. In the midst of their mutual "manopausal" restlessness and dissatisfaction, Jack runs into Austin. In vague hopes of getting a loan to keep his business afloat, Jack proposes a tennis match that, predictably, becomes a kind of psychotherapeutic show-down in which both men try to come to terms with the road not taken. Mawe attempts to fashion dual epiphanies out of a few hours of sweat, self-pity and jealousy. But nothing feels convincingly changed for either winner or loser. Readers will find their match, and this tale, more redundant than redemptive. (May)Kirkus Reviews
Two guys work through their respective midlife crises by renewing a long-dead tennis rivalry, their match being the main event in this ever-so-serious debut that devolves into a seemingly unintentional parody of the game and all who play or love it.Austin is the local boy made good: college grad, bank president, millionaire, family man, and club champion at the tennis club he founded. Jack, on the other hand, is a flashy, flabby yacht salesman, a backslapper, a ladies' man thrice married, a clown on the court and off. The point of convergence between the two is tennis, which they picked up at the same time while growing up in the same neighborhood. Now, decades later, they are secretly envious of one another—Austin because of his unhappy marriage and his perception that Jack seems to succeed effortlessly in spite of himself; and Jack because of his crushing debt and a perennial hand-to-mouth existence that he finds increasingly hard to mask. With this psychological baggage they meet to play again one hot Florida morning at Austin's club. As point follows bitter point in a no-holds-barred, dead-even, thoroughly clichéd match; as club members are drawn to watch like so many acolytes at a High Mass; and as the narrative viewpoint floats back and forth across the net, randomly straying out of bounds into the crowd to capture the thoughts of one of Jack's errant sons or Austin's VP's, each of the two men finds the resolve to change his life in a way he had thought impossible.
True to life, after a fashion, but as this grudge match unfolds, so does a contradiction: For all the lavish attention devoted to serve and volley, to both the inner and the outer game, the final impression is of thinly disguised contempt for the sport.