Tina Campanella

This biography covers Laura Robson’s tennis career up to early 2014 when it looked promising that she’d develop her talent and go on to win big. Sadly, from 2014 onwards, Laura was unable to play on a regular basis because of injuries. I thought before reading this bio that she’d retired because of injuries somewhere between 2015 and 2018, as it’s years since I’ve seen any of her matches, but I checked online afterwards and was surprised to learn she retired as recently as 2022.

As this book shows, it’s a great shame that injuries prevented Laura from following a career in the sport she loved. Other tennis players have suffered likewise. It’s a demanding sport.

This book covers Laura’s personal life as well. She comes across as likable and down to earth.

With the author being a journalist, the text often reads like a magazine article or the sport section newspaper, rather than a polished work of non-fiction by a standard book writer. The plus side to this is the pace is fast and the prose isn’t flowery.

On the minus side, journalistic writing tends to be dry and lacking in emotion. At times, the author digresses too much away from the subject matter, as if not wanting to waste any research material. In some instances, she states that Laura won or lost match, then goes on to describe what happened, which is annoying. It would’ve been much better to describe what happened first.

A good non-fiction writer – or someone who writes fiction and non-fiction – know how to build suspense and would use this attribute to recreate scenes from a tennis match and build to the climax, whereas a journalist focuses on dry facts.

I’ve read a handful of books written by journalists and their prose all has the same feel. It's not bad writing, but to me it feels more suited for newspapers and magazines, not commercial non-fiction. The journalistic books I've read are all biased as well, not objective like in most texts; however, in this case I don’t mind, as I’m also biased in favour of Laura Robson.

So, despite the journalist style, this is a good account of Laura Robson’s first twenty years.… (plus d'informations)