Book info

• Title Unstoppable: My Life So Far
• Author Maria Sharapova
• Year 2017
• Genres Memoir, Sports

In the middle of the night, a father and his daughter step off a Greyhound bus in Florida and head straight to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy. They ring the bell, though no one is expecting them and they don't speak English. They have arrived from Russia with just seven hundred dollars and the conviction that this six-year-old girl will be the world's next great tennis star. They are right. This is Maria Sharapova's gripping and fearless autobiography, telling her story from her roots in the small Siberian town her parents fled to after the Chernobyl disaster, through her arrival in the US with nothing and her phenomenal rise to success - winning Wimbledon aged just seventeen - to the disasters that threatened her career and her fight back.

Thoughts

I listened to the audiobook of this, a while back, and realised for whatever reason, I never got around to reviewing it. So I quickly whipped through it again. It’s an interesting insight into the journey of a young girl who was conceived near the site of the Chernobyl reactor, to a five-times Grand Slam champion.

It takes a little while to get used to Sharapova’s narration - it’s quite clear and proper, a little stilted maybe, but nicely written. The content is intriguing, Maria’s thoughts on Serena Williams, on not being friends in the locker room, and of course on the drug ban that she served.

It ends just as she’s about to come back from that and with the benefit of hindsight we know that it’s not been easy since then and culminated in a quick and quiet retirement. However, it’s a testament to what hard work can bring, toil and determination can bring results. With a little bit of luck along the way, maybe.

Rating: 3 / 5