Tennis Lessons
Susannah Dickey

Narrated By: Louisa Harland

Duration: 6 hours and 27 minutes

What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

'Incredibly funny and honest . . . by turns charming and disgusting and I loved it' NELL FRIZZELL

The darkly funny, fiercely honest debut novel about a spirited young misfit and her rocky road to womanhood, stopping at each year along the way.

You’re strange and wrong. You’ve known it from the beginning.

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.

You seem bound to fail, bound to break.

But you know what it is to laugh with your best friend, to feel the first tentative tingles of attraction, to take exquisite pleasure in the affront of your unruly body.

You just need to find your place.

From dead pets and crashed cars to family traumas and misguided love affairs, Susannah Dickey's revitalizing debut novel plunges us into the private world of one young woman as she navigates her rocky way to adulthood.

©Susannah Dickey 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Genre

Modern & contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Love & relationships, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Narrative theme: Interior life

Listen to a sample

Brilliant . . . a wonderful writer, hugely talented, very funny and insightful.

A beautifully written and psychologically incisive bildungsroman...the arrival of a young writer to watch

This is a raw, fierce, shockingly honest coming-of-age story. Tennis Lessons heralds the arrival of a startling new voice in literary fiction

Propulsive . . . brilliantly vivid . . . stays in the mind long after reading

An incredibly funny and poignant portrait of what it is to be young, female and human. The whole thing is witty - the narrative voice, the dialogue, the plot and the detail - while also having searing moments of sadness, discomfort and cruelty. Susannah Dickey has created a world and a main character that is by turns disgusting and charming and I loved it.