The Tennis Partner: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss

by Abraham Verghese Narrated by Neil Shah

Overview

An unforgettable, illuminating story of how men live and how they survive, from Abraham Verghese, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water, an Oprah's Book Club Pick.

“Heartbreaking. . . . Indelible and haunting, [The Tennis Partner] is an elegy to friendship found, and an ode to a good friend lost.”-The Boston Globe

When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow. Just when it seems nothing can go wrong, the dark beast from David's past emerges once again-and almost everything Verghese has come to trust and believe in is threatened as David spirals out of control.

Editorial Reviews

Caroline Knapp

Wise and compassionate...Verghese is a fine writer, lyrical and controlled.... In his search to understand what happened to his friend, Verghese also touches upon more universal truths. -- New York Times

Pico Iyer

The Tennis Partner. . .becomes an anguished case history about. . .one person. . .destroying himself with addiction, and another [getting] addicted to trying to help him. . . .at its core his is a brave and heart-baring story about how even a teacher of internal medicine could not see inside the person closest to him.
—Time

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In his eloquent memoir, My Own Country, Verghese described a parallel story, that of a stranger (himself) and AIDS both becoming part of a rural Tennessee town. Once again, Verghese weaves his own story with that of a place and another person to come up with something moving and insightful. As he tries to cope with a new job on the faculty of Texas Tech School of Medicine, the move to El Paso and the breakdown of his marriage, he meets David, a medical student and former tennis pro. Tennis matches with David reawaken Verghese's passion for the game, and soon the two become regular partners. Their connection is complicated by their shifting roles: Verghese, David's teacher in the hospital wards, becomes his student on the tennis court. For Verghese, the matches offer an escape from loneliness; for David, a recovering drug addict, even more is at stake. Only on the court can they reach a state of grace: "our tennis partnership was special, different, sacred like a marriage." Ultimately, as David's life takes some disturbing turns, Verghese finds himself forced to choose between his role as friend and that of authority figure. While David's story provides the main narrative drive of the book, it's interwoven with Verghese's descriptions of his AIDS patients, his relationship with his sons and meditations on El Paso's distinctive landscape. It's a hard trick but Verghese combines all these elements into a cohesive whole, moving easily between moments of quiet reflection and anxious anticipation. If, as he writes, "to tell a life story [is] to engage in a form of seduction," then Verghese is a master of romance.

Library Journal

Following his sympathetic treatment of AIDS patients in the celebrated My Own Country, one of Library Journal's Best Books of 1994, Verghese offers this study of a doctor friend (and tennis partner) whose life is ruined by drugs.

Kirkus Reviews

The acclaimed author of My Own Country (1996) turns his gaze inward to a pair of crises that hit even closer to home than the AIDS epidemic of which he wrote previously. Verghese took a teaching position at Texas Tech's medical school, and it's his arrival in the unfamiliar city of El Paso that triggers the events of his second book (parts of which appeared in The New Yorker). His marriage, already on the rocks in My Own Country, has collapsed utterly and the couple agree to a separation. In a new job in a new city, he finds himself more alone than he has ever been. But he becomes acquainted with a charming fourth-year student on his rotation, David, a former professional tennis player from Australia.

Verghese, an ardent amateur himself, begins to play regularly with David and the two become close friends, indeed deeply dependent on one another. Gradually, the younger man begins to confide in his teacher and friend. David has a secret, known to most of the other students and staff at the teaching hospital but not to the recently arrived Verghese; he is a recovering drug addict whose presence at Tech is only possible if he maintains a rigorous schedule of AA meetings and urine tests. When David relapses and his life begins to spiral out of control, Verghese finds himself drawn into the young man's troubles. As in his previous book, Verghese distinguishes himself by virtue not only of tremendous writing skill—he has a talented diagnostician's observant eye and a gift for description—but also by his great humanity and humility. Verghese manages to recount the story of the failure of his marriage without recriminations and with a remarkable evenhandedness.Likewise, he tells David's story honestly and movingly. Although it runs down a little in the last 50 pages or so, this is a compulsively readable and painful book, a work of compassion and intelligence.

From the Publisher

Heartbreaking. . . . Indelible and haunting, [The Tennis Partner] is an elegy to friendship found, and an ode to a good friend lost.” — The Boston Globe

“Verghese is a fine writer, lyrical and controlled, and he captures the attachment between the two men—its motives, its allure—with both precision and charm. . . . Wise and compassionate.” — New York Times Book Review

“Verghese writes with such searching lucidity and is so attentive and engaging a figure that he could hold us just by describing his drives around town. . . . At its core his is a brave and heart-baring story about how even a teacher of internal medicine could not see inside the person closest to him. . . . It will speak to anyone who has looked with his heart instead of his eyes.” — Time

“Despite the poignancy of the subject matter . . . Verghese’s telling of it never gets heavy-handed. Instead, he uses his bedside voice: caring, but also slightly detached and startlingly frank.” — New York

“Poignant. . . . The metaphors that underlie tennis permeate the book and give The Tennis Partner. . . . a power that resonates well beyond its topical interest.” — Chicago Tribune

“Gripping. . . . moving. . . . Verghese shows himself to be a thoughtful and honest navigator through life. His pain . . . is impossible not to share.” — Detroit Free Press

“[Verghese] displays perfect pitch in this emotionally charged tale. . . . Readers . . . will be enthralled by his sleuthing into the human heart.” — Entertainment Weekly

“A tale of luminescent humanity. . . . It goes deeper than any book I have ever read to put its finger on the pulse of what friendship truly means. It is a book for everyone of us who has deeply loved and mourned the fragile, ever-changing nature of caring, with its inherent need to ultimately let go. A brave and honest book, The Tennis Partner, haunts and empowers with each volley.” — Denise Chavez, author of Face of an Angel

“This is a knockout book. Beautifully written, it broke my heart and made me happy all at the same time. I loved Verghese’s My Own Country and this even ups the ante—more intense, even closer to the edge.” — Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones

“With writerly grace, Verghese introduces us to the disciplines he holds sacred: tennis, internal medicine, fatherhood, male friendship. Everywhere he is a diagnostician, a teacher, a lover of physical presence. But finally as he walks the back alleys of El Paso searching for his drug-abusing colleague, we understand who Verghese is at his core, a man of honor who goes down mean streets and remains himself good enough for any world. This is an extraordinary book.” — Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac

Time

Verghese writes with such searching lucidity and is so attentive and engaging a figure that he could hold us just by describing his drives around town. . . . At its core his is a brave and heart-baring story about how even a teacher of internal medicine could not see inside the person closest to him. . . . It will speak to anyone who has looked with his heart instead of his eyes.

Detroit Free Press

Gripping. . . . moving. . . . Verghese shows himself to be a thoughtful and honest navigator through life. His pain . . . is impossible not to share.

Chicago Tribune

Poignant. . . . The metaphors that underlie tennis permeate the book and give The Tennis Partner. . . . a power that resonates well beyond its topical interest.

Natalie Goldberg

This is a knockout book. Beautifully written, it broke my heart and made me happy all at the same time. I loved Verghese’s My Own Country and this even ups the ante—more intense, even closer to the edge.

The Boston Globe

Heartbreaking. . . . Indelible and haunting, [The Tennis Partner] is an elegy to friendship found, and an ode to a good friend lost.

Peter D. Kramer

With writerly grace, Verghese introduces us to the disciplines he holds sacred: tennis, internal medicine, fatherhood, male friendship. Everywhere he is a diagnostician, a teacher, a lover of physical presence. But finally as he walks the back alleys of El Paso searching for his drug-abusing colleague, we understand who Verghese is at his core, a man of honor who goes down mean streets and remains himself good enough for any world. This is an extraordinary book.

Denise Chavez

A tale of luminescent humanity. . . . It goes deeper than any book I have ever read to put its finger on the pulse of what friendship truly means. It is a book for everyone of us who has deeply loved and mourned the fragile, ever-changing nature of caring, with its inherent need to ultimately let go. A brave and honest book, The Tennis Partner, haunts and empowers with each volley.

Entertainment Weekly

[Verghese] displays perfect pitch in this emotionally charged tale. . . . Readers . . . will be enthralled by his sleuthing into the human heart.

New York Times Book Review

Verghese is a fine writer, lyrical and controlled, and he captures the attachment between the two men—its motives, its allure—with both precision and charm. . . . Wise and compassionate.

New York

Despite the poignancy of the subject matter . . . Verghese’s telling of it never gets heavy-handed. Instead, he uses his bedside voice: caring, but also slightly detached and startlingly frank.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940160591148
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	616,557

Read an Excerpt

There are two Thanksgivings in El Paso. The one in November is observed much as it is in the rest of America: turkey, dressing, corn, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie, then motor shutdown, a retreat to the couch and TV. Six hundred thousand Pasenos watch the Cowboys play in Texas Stadium six hundred miles east.
The other Thanksgiving is celebrated on the last Sunday in April. It commemorates the day Don Juan de Onate's party of one hundred and thirty families, two hundred and seventy single men, eleven Franciscan friars, eighty-three wagons, and seven thousand cattle discovered El Paso del Norte, the Pass to the North. Previous Spanish explorers had taken the routes along the Conchos River to the Rio Grande, but Onate's colonists had marched from Santa Barbara in New Spain (Mexico) straight up and across the treacherous desert north of Chihuahua city. By the time the advance party of eight horsemen scuffed through brush and cottonwood and finally saw the Rio Grande, they were cotton-mouthed, crazy with thirst. Two horses plunged in and were swept away. Two others drank enough to rupture their stomachs. What Onate had discovered after the fifty-day desert crossing—the last five days with no water at all—was a magnificent valley formed by the Rio Grande as it emerged from the southernmost spurs of the Rockies.
Here, on April 20, 1598, Onate stopped and held a Mass of thanksgiving. He claimed the new territory—New Mexico—in the name of Philip II of Spain a full two decades before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. "I take all jurisdiction, civil as well as criminal, high as well as low, from the edge of the mountains to the stones and sand in therivers, and the leaves of the trees . . ." This opening into the new territory—el paso—would be the caravan route, the lifeline of New Mexico, the jewel in the Camino Real.

Just as there are two Thanksgivings, there are two El Pasos. One is visible from the highway, an El Paso that a trucker traversing America on Interstate 10 from Jacksonville to Los Angeles might see and find nothing to distinguish it from any other American city but for the way it and the Franklin Mountains spring out of the parched and desolate land. He might catch glimpses of the Rio Grande bordering the freeway and beyond that see houses in Juarez, Mexico, sitting on a rise.
It might seem to such an observer as if a desert wind had gleaned pieces of Sacramento, Hackensack, Des Moines, and Dallas and deposited them here where they have rooted and now sprout Blockbusters, Kmarts, Targets, U-Hauls, and every other franchise flavor, their fluorescent signs beckoning like listless whores from both sides of the freeway. And to the trucker's eyes, what little desert he can see past the strip malls and billboards is occupied by bulldozers and cement mixers that are paving over cactus and creosote with the same abandon they had shown Phoenix only twenty years before. From the cab of the truck, the town's founding father would appear to be Sam Walton, and the Wal-Mart edifice its epicenter. And then, fifteen or so exits later, the vision is gone—a forgettable mirage perhaps.

?Donde esta la estacion del ferrocarril? asked the audio Spanish tape in my car.
"La estacion del ferrocarril esta a la derecha," I replied, though I had no idea where the train station was.
After three days of unpacking boxes in our new El Paso house, I had risen before dawn, dressed for my first day at work, and then joined a wagon train of early risers, speeding in two columns, headlights on, down a looping access road to that same freeway. Fortunately, the sign clearly said I-10 east, because in the limitless desert, without the sun, there was almost no way to tell. When Vasquez de Coronado and his party explored the Southwest in 1541, they used the sunrise as a guide, firing an arrow at the sun, and then, before they overtook the first arrow, letting fly another one and another, following this aerial trail until they came to the Rio Grande.
I sped past a square building, and off to one side I saw into a lighted window. A white-uniformed, dark-haired man hovered over someone else's knees, snowcaps on shapeless thighs. He stood as if picking logs from a woodpile. That's all I saw as I passed by. I swiveled my neck against the edge of the seat belt. I thought I saw a sign for the Coronado Nursing Center.
Then I was on the freeway, racing through the desert, the Franklin Mountains now on my left, the river on my right, that tableau from the nursing home well behind me.
But my mind insisted on lingering there, filling in the blanks. I could see the attendant folding over and wedging the soiled draw sheet under the bottom of a withered woman as she lay on one side. I could see him flip her over, using her knees as a lever. One tug and the bundled-up sheet was free and joined the growing pile in the laundry bag. She looked at his face, unable to speak, a prisoner in her own stroke-ravaged brain. And on his face was the set look of a man finding the necessary distance needed to finish work that was not particularly gratifying.

Alone behind our bedroom windows, alone in our cars, towns give us the necessary illusion that we belong. Until that moment, I had felt camouflaged in this new town, shielded from prying eyes, free in my new job to spin a new persona, to pitch my myth, the African-born-but-of-Indian-parentage-naturalized-American saga and to weave it into all the other dusty histories of The Pass. I loved the role of newcomer to town, relished the contrast between the lands I had left behind and this desert where there were broad spaces even between raindrops.

Videos