by Lionel Shriver

'This book is about the small and large ways we hurt each other in the greatest competition on the face of the earth: Love. Buy it. It belongs on that shelf of books you will return to again and again.'-Harry Crews

'Shriver confronts some disconcerting truths that defy a pat, politically correct resolution.'-The New York Times Book Review

'Love me, love my game' says twenty-three year-old Willy Novinsky. Ever since she picked up a racquet at the age of four, tennis has been Willy's one love, until the day she meets Eric Oberdorf. She's a middle-ranked professional tennis player and he's a Princeton graduate who took up playing tennis at the age of eighteen. Low-ranked but untested, Eric, too, aims to make his mark on the international tennis circuit. Willy beholds compatibility spiced with friendly rivalry, and discovers her first passion outside a tennis court. They marry.

Married life starts well but animated shop talk and blissful love-making soon give way to full-tilt competition over who can rise to the top first. In this captivating book, Shriver dissects the hazards of a two-career relationship in this brilliantly perceptive novel about the price both men and women pay for prizing achievement over love.

Born and raised in North Carolina, Lionel Shriver is the author of seven novels, a Guardian columnist, and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Economist. She lives in London. We Need To Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005.