Scarlett Thomas: 41-love

At forty-one, Scarlett Thomas was a successful novelist and a senior academic. She’d quit smoking, gotten healthier, settled down in a lovely house with a wonderful partner. She’d had all the therapy. Then her beloved dog died. Of her three fathers (she’d acquired a stepfather at ten), one died of a heroin overdose and the other two were diagnosed with cancer. Her sister-in-law became pregnant at the same time that she realized that she really was never going to become a mother. For the first time in her life, maintaining her ideal weight had become nearly impossible.

She was supposed to grow up, but she didn’t know how. So instead, she decided to regress: to go back to the thing she’d loved best as a child but had inexplicably abandoned: tennis. Thomas knows she’s not the only person to have wondered if you throw enough money and time and passion at something, whether you can make your dream come true. 41-Love is heartbreaking but frequently darkly funny as Scarlett finds she’ll do anything to win–almost anything.