41-Love: A Memoir

A darkly funny sports memoir about a mid-life crisis, exercise addiction, tennis, and how to grow up when you really, really don’t want to

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. Her parents started to get sick right around the time she realized she was never going to be a mother herself. 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 whether throwing enough money and time and passion at something can make your dream come true. 41-Love is heartbreaking but frequently funny as Thomas finds she’ll do anything to win--almost anything.

Scarlett Thomas was born in London in 1972. She is the author of Oligarchy, The Seed Collectors, PopCo, and The End of Mr. Y. Her previous novels, including The End of Mr. Y, PopCo, and The Seed Collectors, have developed a cult following and sold more than half a million books worldwide. Her work has been translated into twenty-five languages. Scarlett is a professor of creative writing and contemporary fiction at the University of Kent in the U.K.