Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘The Tutor’

Beginnings

On Sunday we do beginnings, taking a look at the start of a Peter Abrahams novel, including those written under the Spencer Quinn moniker™. As a kind of a shout out to the very entertaining Indian Wells tennis tournament, which concludes today, let’s do a book where tennis plays a role. There are a few, including The Tutor, Lights Out, A Perfect Crime, and – coming next summer! Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge. And there’s this one, Thereby Hangs A Tail:

The perp looked around – what nasty little eyes he had! – and saw there was nowhere to go. We were in some kind of warehouse, big and shadowy, with a few grimy high-up windows and tall stacks of machine parts. I couldn’t remember how the warehouse fit in, exactly, or even what the whole case was all about; only knew beyond a doubt, from those nasty eyes and that sour end-of-the-line smell, a bit like those kosher pickles Bernie had with his BLT’s – I’d tried one; once was enough for the kosher pickles, although I always had time for a BLT – that this guy was the perp. I lunged forward and grabbed him by the pantleg. Case closed.

 

Beginnings

On Sunday we do beginnings, taking a look at the start of a Peter Abrahams novel, including those written under the Spencer Quinn moniker™. As a kind of a shout out to Roger Federer, let’s do a book where tennis plays a role. There are a few, including The Tutor, Lights Out, Thereby Hangs a Tail, and – coming next summer! Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge. And there’s this one, A Perfect Crime:

Thursday, the best day of the week – the day of all days that Francie was predisposed to say yes. But here in the artist’s studio, with its view of the Dorchester gas tank superimposed on the harbor beyond, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The problem was she hated the paintings.

Tennis!

Played tennis this morning! First time back on the court since all this. Felt normal! I’ve written quite a bit about tennis – for example, in The Tutor and A Perfect Crime – and in Chet and Bernie, too. Here’s the tennis lesson from Thereby Hangs A Tail:

The tall blond guy took a ball from the bucket and hit it to Ganz. Ganz wore white shorts, had skinny legs like sticks. He swung his racquet and hit the ball back. The tall guy let it go by, took out another ball. “Brush up, Shermie, brush up. Spin on the ball, always spin on the ball.” He hit the ball over the net. Ganz swung, this time missing the ball completely. “Brush up but through, up but through, up but through,” said the tall guy, sending over another ball. Brush? I knew brushes, saw none around. Maybe tennis was tougher than it looked, but I didn’t worry about that because a ball came bouncing over in our direction – we were now beside the court – and I snatched it out of the air, and who wouldn’t have, the ball being right there practically saying, “Catch me.” And then – this part was a bit harder to understand – I was on the court, racing toward the net. Up and over: not much of a challenge, tennis nets turning out not to be very high, but still it felt so great, being airborne and all, that I kind of twisted around still up there, if you see what I mean, and landed facing back at the net, and the next thing I knew I was jumping over it again, from the other direction, and, yes! doing the spin move once more, and when I landed this time, somehow with two balls in my mouth now – how had that happened? – I –

“Chet!”

The Tutor

One of the week’s big stories reminded us of this book, so since on Sundays we’ve been doing beginnings of all the Peter Abrahams novels including those under the Spence pen name, why not look in on Scott and Linda, the parents in THE TUTOR (2002), just before the hiring of the tutor:

“There’s always Amherst or someplace like that,” Scott said.

“Amherst? Are you dreaming? Forget Amherst. You can forget Trinity, for God’s sake.”

“Forget Trinity?”

“Forget NYU, forget BC, forget BU, even. Don’t you get it? The SAT ranks every kid in the nation. Seventy-fifth percentile means there are hundreds of thousands ahead of him, maybe millions. The good schools can fill their classes without going anywhere near Brandon. We screwed up.”

[“His prose is elegant by any literary standard.” – L.A. Times]