Tennis and marriage are more similar than they may appear. In Jessica Anthony’s 2024 novel The Most, she examines the qualms of a 1950s couple throughout the course of one day when former collegiate tennis champ Kathleen refuses to get out of the pool of her apartment complex.
Over the course of the novel, the reader is given a window into both Kathleen and her husband Virgil’s pasts: Kathleen’s success in tennis, her ultimate decision to quit and Vigil’s own affairs and childhood memories.
“The title refers to a move Kathleen learned from her Czech coach, Billy Blasko — most means ‘bridge,’” writes Melisa Ezgi Guleryuz for The Stanford Daily. “You draw your opponent forward, lull them to the net then hit the ball where they cannot follow.”
The climactic moment occurs when Kathleen employs this move against Virgil, forcing him to confront the reality of what their tumultuous marriage has come to.
Anthony’s efficient writing and thoughtfully played out metaphors make for a compelling and thought-provoking read.
Born in Oneida, Jessica Anthony is now a professor at Bates College in Maine, NPR reports. She gave an interview via email to Spartan Expressions concerning the prevailing themes and motifs of her acclaimed novel:
Norah Taylor-O’Connell: “The Most’s central metaphor revolves around the titular tennis move–did you know when writing that this was something you wanted to reference or was it something that came along as you wrote?”
Jessica Anthony: “I knew early on that Kathleen was an athlete with considerable stamina. Of course, sports for women looked very different eighty years ago, and Kathleen could have been a baseball or basketball player–but tennis, a one-on-one game, struck me as the right sport for a character who was facing down a difficult truth about her marriage.”
NTO: “There is a recurring motif of bridges throughout the novel. Billy explains that a bridge is not just a passage but a trap. In a lot of ways, this describes Kathleen and Virgil’s marriage. What elements were most important to you when constructing the story of their marriage?”
JA: “A marriage is made of two individuals who are not only attracted to each other, but also happen to meet at a time in their life when they are ready to connect with another person. I was interested in the years leading up to this ‘readiness’ for both Kathleen and Virgil, and I was interested in their own reasons for being with the other person; and, conversely, their ideas about why the other had chosen them. Marriage, in this way, is a story told four times.”
NTO: “You paint a very visceral image of 1950s suburban America. What drove you towards that era as a setting?”
JA: “”I was interested in chasing the singularity of Kathleen and Virgil during a time of conformity. While there was collective relief that WWII had ended at last, women and minorities (the majority populace) of course had no equal rights. If women worked, they were horrifyingly underpaid. There was no birth control pill. Women could not open their own bank accounts without a man’s signature. The 50s also interested me because it was an era of profound psychological change in the United States centered around technology (the same can be said of the 2020s). Few people owned a television set at the start of the 50s, but by the end of that decade, televisions were in most households (as we now all have phones, AI). The 50s were the era of the birth of advertising, the birth of the “teenager,” and so we began to see companies profiting off of the marketing of social concepts–all of this aside, the 50s were also a time of radical progressive change. This country could not have had success with the Civil Rights Act without the early social progress in the 50s. So it was, in my mind, a decade of quiet dissatisfaction, which made sense for Kathleen and Virgil’s marital dissatisfaction.”
NTO: “The Most is told in a nonlinear structure. (We learn Kathleen and Virgil’s stories as flashbacks and memories while Kathleen swims). Why did you decide to tell their story this way?”
JA: “I only knew that I wanted to write the story of a single day. As soon as I had made that choice, the past forced itself upon me. I did not realize as I wrote that Virgil and Kathleen’s respective days would collide as they do, but savored the opportunity this choice gave me to deliberately repeat information, overlap information, reveal two characters thinking very differently about the same experiences.”
NTO: “A lot of Kathleen’s unhappiness with her life comes from the fact that she chose Virgil out of “ease” – do you think she would’ve been more satisfied had she married Billy or someone else, or is her dissatisfaction meant to be an indication of deeper societal woes?”
JA: “I don’t know what anyone expects when they marry someone because they believe the other person is ‘easy.’ But Kathleen, in her defense, bumped up against a real problem: when her tennis scout turned out to be a sleaze, her dream of becoming a professional player began to fade. So Virgil never had a chance: he became a part of her faded dream–and Kathleen never had a chance, as Virgil’s own dreams were, for their own reasons, totally unrealistic. I’m not sure Kathleen needs to be married to anyone to find satisfaction; I only know that tennis was no longer an option, and so she chose the path most other women chose.”
NTO: “The Most is a very compelling novel about somewhat ordinary occurrences. Billy tells Kathleen about the importance of “real subjects” (war, geopolitics, etc.) but more often than not, there’s a lot of overlap between “real” and personal qualms, especially in the world of Kathleen and Virgil’s marriage. Do you feel it’s important to intertwine complex worldly topics with personal narratives?”
JA: “All characters we write exist in a geopolitical context, and fiction is, perhaps above all things, the art of conflict. But it is also the art of persuasion. Stories which aim to preach or scold are not the type of fiction I usually like to read. Our characters are people, and like real people, they exist in a country, in a moment. There is no time in history when human beings have all been good and moral and progressive (if there were, we would have no stories of that era). Writing a perfect hero and a perfectly evil villain will quickly find you in untroubled waters, where it’s hard for your boat to catch wind. Do your job, and the reader will come to understand the social or political context through the humanity of the people you write. Persuade us, instead, to love the villain, doubt the hero. See what happens next.”
