I’ve been reading LOTS so far this year, but I actually read Carrie Soto Is Back in December. Regardless, it has been one of my favorite books that I read in the past few months, and it’s been super popular among others as well. Even though its been a few months since I finished it, the book has been stuck in my head and so I wanted to write up a full review here as our February book club book! 🙂
Carrie Soto is Back Synopsis
Carrie Soto Is Back tells a story about a fictional tennis player considered “past her prime” who retired from tennis after a knee injury. She was considered the greatest of all time and comes out of retirement when she sees a rising young tennis star about to overtake her record. The story follows her training trying to prepare to play the Grand Slam tournaments to reclaim her record.
While this story definitely has the feel of historical fiction (the story opens in 1994), Carrie Soto is not a real person but instead feels inspired or perhaps a conglomerate of many of the past female tennis greats. I especially couldn’t stop thinking about how this book reminded me of Serena Williams. For one, the media’s portrayal of Serena— people called her self centered and sometimes called her a poor loser which was similar to how Carrie Soto was depicted.The book was clearly trying to play on the idea that when a man focuses heavily on his sport or career, he’s driven and talented and ambitious, but when a woman does it, she’s serious, emotionless, and a “b****” and people question when she’s going to settle down and that she’s obsessed with titles (which she admittedly was). One thing I found interesting was that no one in the media ever mentioned Carrie Soto’s appearance or figure— but rather she was the one constantly and comparing herself to others. Unlike Serena who constantly gets scrutinized for her figure and the way she dresses.
WARNING: Potential Spoilers Ahead
One critique I had was that the romantic element to this story did seem like a bit of an afterthought. I don’t think it was particularly compelling or essential to the story, other than that it played a bit into the redemptive arc for Carrie.
There were a lot of parallels between Carrie Soto and Serena Williams. Similar to Serena Williams, Carrie Soto was coached by her dad. Also similar to the Williams sister’s father, Richard Williams, Carrie’s father, Javier, decided from a very young age that Carrie was going to be a tennis great. In real life, Richard Williams has admitted that he made a 78-age business plan before his daughters were even born about how they would become tennis stars and become incredibly wealthy. Javier started training Carrie from a very young age, just like Richard did for his daughters in real life.
I keep thinking about this element of the story because I feel so conflicted by this for both the Williams sisters and for the fictional Carrie Soto. Obviously Serena Williams is one of the greatest athletes of all time, but was she born to be the best or was it because her dad pushed her so hard and essentially chose that life for her and made it her dream? And like Carrie Soto, the Williams sisters supposedly grew up in a less than ideal financial situation, but because of their tennis talents, they are now extremely wealthy. It’s a quintessential “American dream” kind of story.
I feel highly conflicted over this because in one sense, Javier/Richard helped to forge this great professional and financial success for his daughter Carrie/Serena; however, in the same sense, they seemingly chose that life path for them incredibly young. Is this toxic or an incredibly generous gift they gave their daughters? Probably depends on the outcome. If they hadn’t turned out to be such a success, it would have been viewed as stealing their childhood through such rigorous training. But because they ended up a success, these fathers were viewed as heroes.
In another sense, Carrie is obsessed with living up to her dads expectations her entire life. He reiterated to her time and time again from a young age that Carrie was going to be the greatest tennis player of all time. He said it so much that she was driven simply to fulfill his prophecy. Again, I feel conflicted by this. Is living to fufill a parent’s specific dream for you a healthy mentality? Obviously all parents want to see their children succeed, but it feels like another situation when it’s SO specific that the parent has laid out the child’s future for them.
Javier clearly had a huge part in Carrie’s success in many facets; however, I think his heavy training for her, created a lot of character flaws in her. One part that stuck out to me was when it was recounted that, as a child, Carrie held onto a picture of her late mother and he took it away from her randomly. But Javier is never framed as being flawed in doing this at any point. When Javier dies, he is simply regarded as Carrie’s hero, but I never felt like the flaws in his parenting was ever really acknowledged. Carrie is an incredibly callous character and purposefully unlikable in a lot of ways, but is that a result of the way she was raised and trained or of who she was meant to be?
I found the ending of the book to be satisfying. She ended up losing her record, but did prove that she could “come back” and win a tournament despite her age. She also had a bit of a redemptive arc of being able to have a relationship with a person rather than being solely obsessed with work and tennis. Overall, everything was relatively predictable, but it wasn’t necessarily a negative thing.
Final Rating
4/5 stars. I could not stop thinking about the book when I wasn’t reading it and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since– especially regarding the dynamics of Carries relationship with her father and how that parallels that of the Williams sister’s and their own father.
If you have read, what do you think of the book? What is your rating? What do you think of Carrie’s dynamic with her father?
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