For Ned, 1978 seems a blissful year. Handsome, popular, responsible, and a fine cricketer, life if progressing smoothly, if not effortlessly. When he meets Partia Fendeman his personal jigsaw appears complete. What if her left-wing parent despise his Tory MP father? Doesn't that just make them star-crossed lovers? And surely, in the end, won't the Fendemans be won over by their happiness? ut of course, one person's happiness is another's jealous spite. And spite is about to change Ned's life forever. A promise made to a dying teacher and a vile trick played by fellow pupils rocket Ned from cricket captain to solitary confinement, from Head Boy to political prisoner. ore than twenty years later, Ned returns to London, a very different man from the boy seized outside a Knightsbridge language college. A man implacably focused on revenge, revenge is a dish he plans to savour and serve to those who conspired against him, and those who forgot him.
It took me quite a while to get into the story, but having gotten past the first part which reads like an excerpt from Moab, I could not put it down. I had - on purpose - not read any reviews for this book, and am now glad about that as most reviews only make the comparison to The Count of Monte Christo.
What about the resonances of other works, though? I couldn't help but also be reminded of Zweig's Chess Story, Duerrenmatt's Physicists, The Bourne Identity, and Pulp Fiction. All in all I was reminded of a venerable hodge podge of dilemmas. The kind of pastiche episodes that make fab reading in any graphic novel, except of course that The Stars' Tennis Balls isn't a graphic novel. Isn't it? It will probably take a few days before I can make up my mind about this one.
In any case, 5 stars for gripping my imagination, for making me reconsider literary genres, for keeping me up half the night pondering about the characters, for - no doubt - sticking in my head for a long time to come.
