Tennis Lessons

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I really adored the protagonist of this story. I found her warm and although sometimes troubled, highly likeable. I was rooting for her throughout to forge her own path. I was sad when this book ended as I could have kept on reading to find out what happened next in her life. This is the voice that rings in your ears. Because you never say the right thing. You’re a disappointment to everyone. You’re a far cry from beautiful - and your thoughts are ugly too.

The point, it seems, is not to create a linear story with a believable plot (though there is a certain amount of this), but rather to create a beautiful, symmetrical formation. Images, metaphors, ideas and characters speak to each other across time and space. There are recurring lines and motifs (the ee cummings line “Not even the rain has such small hands” is one example), and although Lily and Siobhán are separate people, at times they seem to share an overlapping consciousness. Lily wondering “if living will ever ... reveal some new facet that isn’t so unbearable”, is not dissimilar to Siobhán feeling “so inescapably joyless that living seems an unnecessary expenditure of energy”. Absolutely brilliant . . . touchingly captures the awkward, aching longing of a misfit . . . darkly funny Express Without giving too much of the plot away, Common Decency follows -through an alternating dual narrative, the mixed, messy -and often let’s face it, rather mundane lives, of two young women, living in a apartment building in Belfast.

She is the author of Tennis Lessons (2020) and Common Decency (2022), both published by Doubleday UK. It’s about low self esteem and feeling you don’t belong anywhere, a misfit. And then it’s about shame and trauma, burying yourself deep. About stumbling between alcohol fuelled sexual encounters that generally don’t end well. I loved Common Decency . . . a surprising, clever, sad and strange book . . . such a propulsive joy to read too.' MEGAN NOLAN Ironically, we are left with the impression that Lily might be starting to find her way, while Siobhan has a longer road ahead. Lily, recently moved to a flat in Belfast after the death of her mother, is struggling in her isolation. When she encounters Siobhan, a girl who lives in the flat upstairs, Lily perceives her as someone who has a happier, fuller life than her own. Lily fantasises about them forming a friendship, being out for a drink together, but she cannot see any way to bring this about.

Place and cultural context are approached in an interesting way. We are in Belfast — we walk with Lily across Botanic, up University Street, down Elmwood Avenue, and so on — but the troubled history of the place is consigned to the periphery. An older generation prays the younger “will never have to experience something like that”. Outsiders “fetishise” the idea of coming from somewhere with such “incompatible cultural hegemonies squashed together”. The setting is almost incidental — until it is not, and Siobhán, whose personal life is in turmoil, also finds her eyes getting wet over a “young journalist” who has been murdered on the Falls Road, “caught between freshly radicalised young republicans and the PSNI”. The book follows the main character from the time she is three years old up until her late twenties, and never flinches away from things we prefer not to talk about, from conversations we were never supposed to hear to dark thoughts we can't unthink, from ingrown toenails to blood clots, from times we were the victim to times when we were the bully. For me the strongest parts were when she was among her own peers, whether that was with her best friend or the people she outwardly were her friends but were her tormentors. Many teenage girls know about that balance, and whether the reader knows about this first hand or through observation these relationships felt painfully real. Moreover, I challenge anyone not to relate to how it feels to have a joke not land or say the wrong thing at the worst time, as this character so often experiences. A beautifully written and psychologically incisive bildungsroman...the arrival of a young writer to watch Observer

A real person, asking for empathy, is always going to stay unknowable, because no matter how hard you try to comprehend their pain, you'll always be limited by the mechanisms of your own experience” This was a book I struggled to write a perfect review about so I do apologise for the ramble that I have put together. It’s very rare that a book leaves me like this but nonetheless it was a very well written novel. This is the voice that rings in your ears. Because you never say the right thing. You're a disappointment to everyone. You're a far cry from beautiful - and your thoughts are ugly too. Since her mother's death, Lily has withdrawn from the world, trapped between grief and anger. She has to break out of this damaging cycle - but how?

So the style is sublime, and the content is thorny and complicated. Siobhan and Lily are difficult characters who aren’t easy to sympathise with; they both view others with an often scabrous contempt, they both lie and manipulate. They’re so blinkeredly wrapped up in their own lives, neither can see that they might find a much-needed real friend in each other if they actually started paying attention to the world outside their own fevered minds. That said, I did feel slightly mislead by the books synopsis. Making it out to be me more of a dark, psychological thriller than it turned out to be. Though there was some semblance of slow building tension, it never really amounted to much. And to be honest, felt rather anticlimactic towards the end. Tennis Lessons is a singular creation - a vivid, funny, emotionally intelligent dissection of an ordinary life. Nicole Flattery The author interweaves questions on human nature, class, religion and identity into this complex story, and I found that interesting and engaging as well. But at the end of the day, the book is about how our relationship with our parents formed who we are today and still impacts our view of ourselves and our relationships with others. Lily seems to have reached peace, but Siobhan is still processing. It’s a hard read. But this author has a really good sense of cynical humour which helps. And you see that in the epilogue as well. All being said, I did find the ending a little disjointed and despite Lily learning a lesson not to take people and things at face value, I didn’t see where the story line was going when she was breaking into her apartment.The lives of a bereaved young woman and her neighbour who is consumed by her affair with a married man entwine in this dark, compelling and compassionate coming-of age novel. Upstairs, Siobhan is consumed by her affair with a married man. Her days revolve around his sporadic texts and rare visits. She barely notices the strange girl who lives below and dawdles in the foyer.