Ace, Marvel, Spy
Ace, Marvel, Spy
By: Jenni L. Walsh
[Fulfilled ‘A book with a title containing a series of three’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat these two imposters just the same”
“When we’re forty, love, we’ll look back and realize we have everything we’ve ever wanted.”
“It’s funny, in tennis, love means nothing. But in life, love is everything.”
You’re telling me there was a tennis champion who ALSO wrote comics for Marvel who ALSO was an international spy during WWII?! How did I not know about Alice Marble?!
Of course I want to get this story.
But before we carry on, I need to point out my mistake: the title of this book is a smidge misleading. Alice Marble did indeed write/edit comics, but she did not do it for Marvel. It was of the Wonder Woman family— DC Comics. The ‘marvel’ in the title, I believe, is due to the definition of marvel being ‘something that causes wonder or astonishment; prodigy’ and probably partly because it sounds like Marble.
Still cool, but not the title I would have expected. Oh well, pickers and choosers and stuff.
So yes, the premise of this book is awesome. However, the execution of it was a little lacking. Especially in the first half of the book.
It’s hard to really nail down why, but the writing style and piecing together of the story just seemed off and not compelling.
Walsh says in her author’s note that she primarily used Alice Marble’s memoir to write this book and didn’t really use any other biographies of Marble in her research. It seems like she wanted to basically write a book based on the memoir. However, I think if she had fictionalized it a little bit more, left out certain parts, etc, it would have flowed better and felt like a solid novel with the conflicts and progression more in order.
Plus, it sounds like parts of Marble’s memoir haven’t been able to be corroborated by other historians or had some errors in it (even though she claimed to have a photographic memory). If we’re not sure what exactly is true anyway, might as well embellish it a little to tie in more pieces or add more tension and suspense. It’s not a biography so I think readers kind of expect that when we read historical fiction.
For example, the comic writing really doesn’t do much for the story the way that it’s put in there. Alice ends up writing a comic column inspired by Wonder Woman by telling the real stories of courageous or intelligent women in history and their achievements but in comic form (including women like Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Helen Keller, and Sojourner Truth).
I think the tie-in is that Alice Marble could have been a wonder woman of history with her tennis accomplishments, aid in the war (if it’s true), and her push for equality in tennis (as she helped support Althea who became the first African American to win a Grand Slam). Marble also coached Billie Jean King.
However, in Ace, Marvel, Spy, there’s really only a few pages dedicated to that aspect of her life and they don’t really tie in to any part of the plot except that she needed a job. I wish Walsh had gotten a little more creative in connecting it into the espionage area of Marble’s life.
The story is broken into two timelines: the ‘Then’ which follows Marble’s tennis career from nothing to #1, and the ‘Now’ which follows Marble’s post-tennis life including her marriage and her spy mission in Switzerland. This format did take away some of the tension because the ‘Now’ parts often created spoilers in the ‘Then’ sections— we already know how this turns out.
Some of it also got a little confusing because I would forget which of her injuries happened in which timeline.
Dual timelines are pretty standard for historical fiction so I don’t know if I would say scrap it altogether, but something was missing from the composition of these two timelines to make it flow and jive better.
What I Didn’t Like
I know it’s tricky to write about the tennis games because you can’t write every shot and there are a lot of games in a match, but some of the writing around that felt abrupt. False build-ups and what not.
Another reviewer commented about the random facts that seemed to be shoved into the writing that may not have added much and I did notice that too. If it was meant to be a character trait of Alice like her photographic memory made her constantly bring up facts she had memorized, then there probably should have been more of them. If it wasn’t supposed to be a character trait then there were too many of them.
For the most part I think Walsh did a pretty good job of capturing the vernacular and slang of the time period and place but there were certain phrases or words that felt out of place. Like when she said of her relationship that it was “rainbows and unicorns”— that seems like something that was popularized long after WWII.
Near the beginning of the book Alice gets a call from President Roosevelt to do some spy stuff but it takes up like a page or two and then it’s over. I was worried that was going to be the extent of her spying. Thankfully, there was more, but to have that little snippet like that without knowing where we’re going felt weird. I think it would have been better to somehow combine the two or something.
Marble gets her spy mission at about 50% of the way through the book and that’s when it started to pick up. I enjoyed the second half of the book better than the first and thought the writing was a little better.
What I Liked
Chapter 20 was probably the most engaging chapter for me because her life gets real. And real hard. And that’s probably the main place where I felt attached to Alice’s character. The connection of this hardship to what’s written above the gate at Wimbledon was a really good thing incorporate; I’m glad Walsh did that.
I also liked the emphasis Walsh made for Alice on the 40-Love score: how it’s a pivotal moment in the game. Then, identifying moments throughout that were ‘40-Love moments’— what she does then could easily determine the rest of the ‘game’— was another good tennis connection.
Recommendation
All in all, I think some adjustments and different editing and progressions would have made this book that much better and cohesive. Jenni Walsh found a great new aspect of WWII and person to highlight that most people don’t know about, but I just wish the book would have come together a little differently.
While I can’t claim this one to be a ‘must read’, if you typically enjoy historical fiction or novels with new aspects of WWII, I would think this one would be an enjoyable book for you.
I also think if you enjoy tennis, it would be a fun book for you aw well. There aren’t a ton of tennis books out there, but if you do enjoy them, I could also recommend to you Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Reid Jenkins.
If you don’t read much historical fiction and you’re only going to read a couple this year, I can’t guarantee you’re going to like this one or should make this one of your books. There are some better options to fill the few slots of your reading plan.
Last thought— someone should spend more time on figuring out what the real deal is with Alice Marble’s spying because more people should probably know about her and all her exploits.
[Content Advisory: no swearing; a couple closed-door bedroom scenes]
**Received an ARC via Wunderkind PR**
This book just released January 14, 2025. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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