The Stars' Tennis Balls

infobox Book |
name = The Stars' Tennis Balls
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Stephen Fry
illustrator =
cover_artist = Artist Partners
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Thriller, Novel
publisher = Hutchinson
release_date = 28 September 2000
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 388 pp (Hardcover edition)
371 pp (Paperback edition)
isbn = ISBN 0-09-180151-6 (Hardcover edition)
ISBN 0-09-179388-2 (Paperback edition)
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"The Stars' Tennis Balls" is a novel by Stephen Fry, first published in 2000. In the United States, the title was changed to "Revenge". In the Afterword to the 2003 American edition, Fry admits that the story "is a straight steal, virtually identical in all but period and style to Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" but denies plagiarism, since Dumas also admits that the plot was taken from a contemporary urban legend.

Plot introduction

The main character, Ned Maddstone, is a seventeen year old schoolboy who appears to be the sort of person for whom everything goes right. He is captain of school, talented at sports and following in the footsteps of his father towards Oxford University, then a career in politics. He is happy and has fallen in love with a girl called Portia. But a few bizarre twists and turns of fate ensure that his life is turned upside down. As mentioned above, the plot is extremely similar to the story of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Explanation of the novel's title

The original title comes from a quotation taken from John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi". In full it reads: "We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied which way please them."

Dedication

The novel's dedication reads simply "To M'Colleague" - "M'Colleague" being the name by which Fry and Hugh Laurie referred to each other in their TV sketch show "A Bit of Fry and Laurie".

Plot summary

Things begin to go wrong for the main character when his school friend Ashley Barson-Garland notices that Maddstone has secretly read part of his diary and therefore knows his dark secret, namely that he is ashamed of his working class roots. The clever Barson-Garland plots the downfall of Maddstone and joins forces with two others in a plot to get him arrested for possession of marijuana.

The two respective cohorts are another school friend called Rufus Cade, who is jealous of Maddstone's success and Portia's American cousin Gordon Fendeman, who dislikes Maddstone because he is in love with Portia. Unfortunately, when Maddstone is arrested, the envelope which happens to be in his pocket and which was entrusted to him by a dying school teacher turns out to be a coded message from the Irish Republican Army. He is whisked away from the police station by a smooth secret services operative called Oliver Delft who calmly takes his confession until he hears where Maddstone was asked to deliver the envelope to, at which point things take another turn for the worse.

The address is that of Delft's mother and would reveal Delft's hidden ancestral relationship to a Fenian traitor, so Delft callously decides that Maddstone must disappear. He is beaten up, pumped full of drugs and taken away to a remote hospital which he later finds out is on an island off the coast of Sweden. For several years he is told by a Doctor Mallo that his memories of a person called Ned Maddstone are false and merely the products of a diseased mind. Then, just when he is starting to believe the mind-programming, he is allowed to fraternise with the other inmates and meets a man called Babe, whom he quickly discovers is another person imprisoned in this hellish place by the British Government.

Together, Babe and Maddstone play chess, speak in various languages and generally give each other hope. Babe takes it upon himself to educate the younger man. Soon, Maddstone again believes he is indeed the son of Sir Charles Maddstone and through thoroughly rigorous thinking works out who it was who betrayed him and how, although he is still baffled as to why he was imprisoned on the island. After some time, Babe dies, having first suggested a way in which Maddstone might escape.

Maddstone manages to escape successfully from the hospital in Babe's coffin. He sells the prescription drugs he has stolen and goes to Switzerland, where he visits a bank and checks the account details previously given to him by Babe. He discovers he is fabulously rich (to the tune of £324 million).

Assuming the identity of Simon Cotter, he swiftly becomes rich and famous as an internet entrepreneur, making huge profits by investing in high risk ventures. Then he returns to England and wreaks his revenge upon the four men who he feels did him wrong. Therefore he drives to their deaths Rufus Cade, Ashley Barson-Garland, Gordon Fendeman and Oliver Delft. With his task complete, Cotter/Maddstone hopes to renew his relationship with Portia, but this is not to be. She flees him with her son, since he has just killed her husband, Gordon.

The novel ends with Cotter/Maddstone tearing up the old love letters he once sent to Portia as he travels back to his only 'home', the prison hospital on the island which he now owns.

Allusions/references to other works

The story mirrors that of The Count of Monte Cristo. Fry states in the Afterword that to make his novel appear more of a conscious homage, he changed the characters' names to anagrams or references to Dumas' work:

:

Literary significance & criticism

Reviews of the book were good. Jane Shilling declared in "The Times" "This is an odd, interesting, ambitious book with a complex pedigree" and Harry Mount wrote of Fry in the Daily Telegraph "He seems to be concentrating more on producing a taut thriller. This he does to good effect, adding a talent for terror and suspense-writing to his quiverful of skills". [Jane Shilling "Unspeakable acts" "The Times" September 30, 2000] [Harry Mount "Stephen Fry can write a taut thriller too" "Daily Telegraph" October 1, 2000] However, Stephen Moss, writing in the Guardian opined that it was a "good read rather than great book, pacy, well constructed and rather gruesome. If one were to make a criticism, one might say that it was a trifle banausian. It works like clockwork, but one does not buy a novel to tell the time." [Stephen Moss "Joy for the jester" "The Guardian" October 5, 2000]

Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science

* Fry exploits the fact that Maddstone is sheltered from society for over ten years to show how it has changed in that time. His character is at first ignorant of mobile phone technology and does not know that Germany has reformed into a single country.
* Ashley Barson-Garland says at one stage "The Blessed Margaret already feels like a distant dream does she not? His Toniness, too, will disappear into the vacuum of history in a twinkling". He is referring of course to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair respectively.

* In the latter part of the novel Fry makes allusions to possible attempts by government and/or private enterprise to control the internet.

Release details

As "The Stars' Tennis Balls":
* 2000, UK, Hutchinson, ISBN 0-09-180151-6, 28 September 2000, Hardback
* 2001, UK, Arrow ISBN 0-09-972741-2, November 1 2001, Paperback

As "Revenge":
* 2002, USA, Random House Inc., Hardback
* 2003, USA, Random House Inc., ISBN 0-8129-6819-0, Paperback

References

;Notes