The Stars' Tennis Balls

The Stars' Tennis Balls
Author(s)	Stephen Fry
Cover artist	Artist Partners
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Thriller, Novel
Publisher	Hutchinson
Publication date	29 September 2000
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)
OCLC Number	45886322

The Stars' Tennis Balls is a psychological thriller 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's 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 (Edward) 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 schoolfriend Ashley Barson-Garland discovers 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 schoolfriend called Rufus Cade, who is jealous of Maddstone's good looks and popularity, and Gordon Fendeman, the American cousin of Ned's girlfriend Portia, who dislikes him because he too is in love with Portia. Unfortunately, when Maddstone is arrested, the envelope that happens to be in his pocket, which was entrusted to him by a dying man employed by the school as a sailing instructor, 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 listens calmly to Maddstone's explanation of events until he reveals the address to which he was asked to deliver the envelope – at which point things take another turn for the worse.

The address is that of Delft's mother and would reveal his hidden ancestral relationship to a Fenian traitor, so he callously decides that Maddstone must disappear. Maddstone is beaten up, pumped full of drugs and taken away to a remote lunatic asylum which he later finds out is on an island off the coast of Sweden. For many years it is impressed on him by a Dr Mallo that his memories of his life as a person called Ned Maddstone are false and merely the product of a diseased mind. Then, just when he is starting to believe this mind-programming, he is finally allowed to fraternise with the other inmates. He begins regularly playing chess with a man known simply as Babe, who he soon discovers was also imprisoned in this hellish place by the British Government but has learned to cope with his situation by acting mad for the benefit of his captors even though he is perfectly sane and highly educated.

The two men become close friends and generally give each other hope. Babe agrees to educate Maddstone, helping him to play chess like a master and teaching him to speak several languages, including Swedish, although he keeps this a secret from the hospital staff. Eventually Maddstone realises he is indeed the son of Sir Charles Maddstone and with Babe's help works out through lateral thinking who it was who betrayed him and how, although he is still baffled as to why he was imprisoned on the island. When Ned mentions the name of Oliver Delft, Babe recalls a list of IRA sympathisers that he once saw very briefly and remembered due to his photographic memory, leading Ned to learn the true nature of the conspiracy. After some time Babe dies, having first devised a way in which his friend might escape to the mainland, which Maddstone duly does by hiding in Babe's coffin. He then sells some prescription drugs he has brought with him from the asylum and, as directed by Babe, travels to Switzerland, visits a certain bank and presents the details of an account in which Babe had deposited large sums of stolen money, which has by now accrued many years' worth of interest.

Maddstone thus becomes fabulously wealthy (to the tune of £324 million). Assuming the identity of Simon Cotter, he swiftly becomes famous as a mysterious internet entrepreneur, making huge profits by investing in high-risk ventures. He then returns to England and wreaks his revenge upon the four men responsible for his years of imprisonment by cleverly driving to their deaths Rufus Cade, Ashley Barson-Garland, Gordon Fendeman and Oliver Delft. When his task is complete he hopes to renew his relationship with Portia, but this is not to be. On discovering his identity Portia is horrified by the change in Maddstone's personality and flees with her son Albert after the death of her husband, Gordon Fendeman.

The novel ends with Cotter/Maddstone tearing up the old love letters he once sent to Portia as he returns to what he now realises is his only real 'home', the hospital on the island that 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:

Monte Cristo	Stars' Tennis Balls	Notes
Edmond Dantès	Ned Maddstone	anagram
Mercedes	Portia	pun: Mercedes-Benz → Porsche
de Villefort	Oliver Delft	anagram
the Abbe (Faria)	the Babe (Fraser)	partial anagram
Fernand Mondego	Gordon Fendeman	anagram
Noirtier	Blackrow	translated literally (calque)
Capt. Leclere	Paddy Leclare	homonym
Caderousse	Rufus Cade	translation: rousse = red = Rufus
Baron Danglars	Barson-Garland	anagram
Monte Cristo	Simon Cotter	anagram
Albert de Morcerf	Albert Fendeman	homonym
Abbé	Babe	anagram

Literary significance and 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". 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."

Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science

• Fry exploits the fact that Maddstone is sheltered from society for eighteen 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

As Speelbal:

• 2001, Belgium and The Netherlands, Thomas Rap, ISBN 90 6005 727 9, Paperback

As Gudernes Kastebold:

• 2002, DK, Lindhardt og Ringhof, ISBN 978-87-595-1658-4, Stapled / Paperback

See also

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.

References

Notes