Who IS Carrie Soto?

Since I discovered Daisy Jones & The Six, I have been obsessed with Taylor Jenkins Reid’s books. The way she creates stories about these famous women, it’s as if they could have lived in real life. So much so that it has made me want to google them to see if they are real. By telling these fictional stories of famous women, it’s as if she is preserving the stories of remarkable women in our society. And I think without meaning to, she writes beautiful books about feminism and what it’s like to be a woman in this patriarchal world. So let me show you why I think Carrie Soto could be a hero for all women worldwide.

First, let’s start with finding out who Carrie Soto is. Carrie Soto is a young 37-year-old retired tennis player for southern California. She has decided to come out of retirement to defend her tennis record of most grand slam titles against Nikki Chan, who has tied her for this record. Carrie hasn’t played tennis in over six years and asks her father to be her coach again, just like at the beginning of her tennis career. However, Carrie’s fear of losing keeps her from playing at her best and causes her to lose her first grand slam in Australia. There are only four grand slams a year on the tennis tour, and she now only has three more chances to prove that she is still the greatest tennis player of all time. So, Carrie and her coach(father) return to southern California, take what they learned, and begin forming their strategy for the next grand slam. Over the next six weeks, her training is more challenging than ever, and she shows up at the next grand slam in Paris in the best shape of her life. She didn’t win, but she got further in this tournament than at the last one.

During this space between the next grand slam, Carrie’s father collapses from a weak heart and ends up in the hospital. So she must leave her father and go to London to start training for the next grand slam. She leaves her tennis friend Bowe Huntley there to help her father while she is away. At this time, she takes what she learned from her father while trusting that her body remembers how to win and uses it to finally win the grand slam in London—tying herself once again with Nikki Chan, who had won the grand slam in Paris.

Upon returning from London, she allows herself to fall into a routine of working out in the mornings, training in the afternoons with Bowe having dinners with her father, and then sneaking Bowe back over to spend the nights together. This routine goes on for weeks until her dad decides to tell her that he knows that she and Bowe are together and that he must stay for dinner. The following morning Carrie went over to her father’s house to check on him to find that he had another heart attack in the middle of the night and had passed away. Her father’s death left her devastated and unsure if she would play the last grand slam in New York. At the same time, she finds a notebook her father had been using to take notes on all of Carrie’s tennis opponents and strategies on how to beat them—causing her to want to do the next grand slam in honor of her father. Who, by the way, was also a fantastic tennis player during his lifetime. Bowe and Carrie play in the grand slam in New York, both making it to the finals, and both lose. They, however, come to peace with it all and are happy to retire. Carrie decides to become her rival’s (Nikki Chan) coach, and we end the story with her and Bowe watching Nikki in the stands at the US Open the following year.

Now that we know who Carrie Soto is let’s look at why she should be every women’s hero. In my opinion, it’s because she continued to push forward even though everyone was against her, nobody wanted her to come out of retirement, and none of the other tennis players liked her. Carrie couldn’t even get any of them to hit against her for practice. She also showed us that we could accomplish anything we wanted at any age and not let the fear of criticism stop us from doing what we love. She was nicknamed the Battle Axe by male commentators as a way to call her a Bitch without saying it. And that was because they saw her perseverance and cruelty on the court as something to hate about her. But she never let that stop her from being true to herself and kept moving forward no matter what. Carrie shows us that we can smash the Patriarchy by just being ourselves in a world full of men trying to knock us down.

Carrie Soto Is Back was a beautiful book on how to live life on your terms and to go for your dreams, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else but you. This book has the most extraordinary comeback story I have ever read, and it felt so authentic to me. Also, I was surprised to learn that Taylor Jenkins Reid never played tennis and that she formed this whole story from research for this book. So if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend you get yourself a copy of this book and start reading it asap!