This turned out to be the second of two novels by Nastase and it was quite good. The front and back covers are both outrageously misleading. It's not sexy or salacious at all and what's advertised as the substance of the book—famous tennis star can't keep his hands off of his adopted daughter and protégé—is actually a plot development that only occurs at the very end and feels tacked on and unconvincing.

The real story concerns how the Hungarian champion Istvan Horwat is getting too old to have too many more chances at winning tournaments. He's been living large and avoiding any commitments beyond tennis.

He has a recurring nightmare in which the tennis net becomes a net that traps him like a fish underwater. In real life, it's simply age that will trap him and force some kind of reckoning.

When his best friend and doubles partner dies in a plane crash, Horwat adopts his newly orphaned 10-year-old daughter. Most of the book is about how a very self-centered and indulgent celebrity attempts to alter the shape of his life to include this huge change.

It's a balancing act that Horwat isn't especially good at, eventually realizing that there's more to being a father than paying for boarding school.

His romantic life transforms as well, with his lovers not always getting along so well with his traumatized daughter, and everyone's emotions being raw and near the surface most of the time.

There's absolutely nothing smutty or titillating in here. Even by the standards of, say, the 1920s, the risqué factor is practically nonexistent.

The real story is about maturity. The progress from child to young adult is paralleled by a childish adult whose inner life eventually matches his age.

But it's quite well written, at least in this translation from French to English by Ros Schwartz.

It's an absorbing story with many felicities and interesting characters. Real-life characters such as Billie Jean King and Jimmy Connors are folded in among Nastase's inventions.

And there are some curious tennis professional insights such as Horwat's being "forbidden to swim" because "swimming sets up the wrong muscles for tennis".

Is this true? Is it or was it an instruction that professional tennis players follow?

The Net was good enough that I'll look for his other novel.

The first line is "A murmur of disappointment accompanied his interminably slow approach to the net".