Crooked Little Heart : A Novel
- Book Review,
by ANNE LAMOTT
Amazon.com
At 13, Rosie plays a gangly, pigeon-toed second fiddle to her juicy, sexy friend Simone. The two are junior tennis champs who often cart home trophies. But driven by the gnawing fear that she's a loser, Rosie starts to cheat. Meantime, boy-crazy Simone dabbles in off-court disaster. Up in the bleachers a weird loner named Luther obsessively follows Rosie's games, while at home her mother wrestles her own demons. Anne Lamott (Operating Instructions) has turned in a fair depiction of the blood and bones of adolescence that's thankfully leavened by sharp humor and transcendent moments. The novel is uneven and heavy-handed at times, but often rewarding.
From School Library Journal
YA. Some girls, like Rosie's friend and doubles partner on the Northern California tennis circuit, enter adolescence with young womanly grace and appeal; others?like Rosie?find the onset of metamorphosing body and questionable social status fraught with a seemingly endless string of bad days. Lamott has a keen ear and reportorial skill for this sort of age-and-gender-driven angst. She embues Rosie's mother and adult friends with that same understanding. Although they have problems of their own, but they provide Rosie with admirable support that encourages her maturation rather than suffocating her with overwhelming concern. Interestingly, this novel features a great female tennis player who deals with her own cheating, a similar situation to that found in Marcia Byalick's YA novel, It's a Matter of Trust (Browndeer, 1995). Both well-written books speak to readers who have little interest in tennis while providing those who love the game with some lively scenes of the sport. Older girls will enjoy Lamott's newest offering, and may well wax envious at Rosie's family's understanding. That her 14-year-old friend is less lucky in the end, while seemingly having the better draw at the outset, lends a fairy-tale moral quality that embellishes the whole, rather than detracting from its power.?Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CACopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Tennis, anyone? The descriptions of matches here are so detailed that best-selling author Lamott (Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, LJ 3/15/93; Bird by Bird, Audio Reviews, LJ 9/1/96) often seems to be writing another nonfiction book. But there is an abundance of plot as well. Thirteen-year-old Rosie is an up-and-coming tennis pro who learns to win matches by cheating; her father's dead, her mother's a recovered alcoholic, her best friend and doubles partner is pregnant. But the plot thickens: there's a sexually threatening stranger who attends all her matches, her mother's second-marriage is problematic, an old friend is dying, another old friend is in a bad relationship, and more. The point of view shifts so often that listeners who come to this tape without having read the printed version will have trouble keeping track of who's who, and Kate Burton's peppy and animated reading is of little help. Best for libraries where there's a lot of interest in Lamott's other works.?Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New YorkCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Entertainment Weekly
The bookish heroine of Lamott's much underappreciated 1983 novel Rosie has grown into a 13-year-old cheating tennis champ who, ruffled by the wayward ways of those around her ... still mourns her idealized, long-dead dad.... this beautiful, warbling sequel squeezes as much poetry as could possibly be extracted from a difficult adolescence.
The New York Times Book Review, Benjamin Cheever
What happened to the giggly, absurd character who wrote two nonfiction books? … The limitations of Crooked Little Heart may have something to do with the different requirements of fiction and nonfiction. In nonfiction the artist can be as outlandish as he or she wants to be. Chance on an unbelieving clod, and the ultimate rejoinder is ready at hand: "Listen, dummy, it actually happened!" Whereas in a novel, readers who won't suspend their disbelief simply won't suspend it; there's nothing the writer can do.
From AudioFile
Kate Burton does a masterful job with mother-daughter dynamics in Lamott's story of a California family that includes Elizabeth and her 13-year-old daughter, Rosie. She captures the alternating dependency and rebellion of adolescence with a sure touch. She gives Rosie a vivid blend of little girl's voice and teenager's sulkiness. Lamott fills the novel with threads of family relationships interwoven and offered in honest detail. Burton offers a fine rendition, although the abridgment leaves some gaps that the full text would probably resolve. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
Renowned for her delightful nonfiction, including Bird by Bird (1994), as well as four previous novels, La-mott is tender and buoyant as she depicts the tsunami of adolescence that nearly drowns Rosie, a 13-year-old tennis champion, and her tennis partner and best friend, the luscious Simone, and that capsizes Rosie's fragile mother, Elizabeth. Happily married to James but still in mourning for Rosie's dead father, Elizabeth isn't up to the arduous work of guiding her daughter through this sea change and collapses into the black hole of depression just when Rosie has to face a series of painful situations both on the tennis court and off, including the shock of Simone's pregnancy. Lamott is exquisitely sensitive to the confusion of emerging sexuality, the mix of fear and ambition involved in competitive sports, and the feeling of stunned helplessness in the face of birth and death. Vibrant with bright metaphors and funny dialogue, this is a sweet, complex, and compassionate tale. Donna Seaman
From Kirkus Reviews
After a very successful nonfiction run (Bird by Bird, 1994, etc), Lamott returns with her fifth novel seemingly refreshed and invigorated with a further exploration of the world of Rosie Ferguson, the awkward adolescent tennis champion first seen in Rosie (1983). Safely nestled in suburbia, surrounded by loving adults, and bolstered by her success as half of the top-ranked tennis team in the northern California girls 14-and-under doubles, Rosie lives a life sufficiently all-American to include a haunting sense of impending disaster. This sense of foreboding, shared by just about everyone Rosie knows, is personified in the form of Luther, a shabby, middle-aged loner who hangs around the area's tennis courts watching the young girls compete. Rosie's mother, Elizabeth, a recovered alcoholic, must fight the temptation to pin all her free- floating anxieties on creepy Luther, who's really just a distraction from her own troubling directionlessness and depression. Elizabeth's tendency to spend the day in her darkened bedroom is hurting her marriage and scaring Rosie, who alternately longs to nurse her mother back to health and to strangle her for being so weak. And Rosie has enough worries without this: Her best friend and tennis partner, Simone, has been experimenting with sex while skinny Rosie can hardly justify wearing a training bra; a beloved family friend is dying; and Rosie finds herself curiously drawn to Luther. Despite the adults' best efforts to help Rosie cope with her anxieties, maturity alone can teach her to let others make their own mistakes and to accept the tragedies of life along with the miracles. As usual, Lamott's brand of winsome wisdom begins to grate just a bit (all of her characters are on intimate terms with Recovery jargon, and even Luther, whom Rosie finally meets, offers predictably mellow observations). But the greater depth, complexity, and seriousness here make up for the smiley faces and rainbows. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Midwest Book Review
A family finds itself involved in struggles on many levels; from an aspiring young tennis champion's conflicts with the sport and with a mysterious man who stalks her from the bleachers to a stepfather's uncertain fit within the family's close structure. Lamott's focus on the special dynamics of family interrelationships makes for a powerful story.
Book Description
With the same winning combination of humor and honesty that marked her recent nonfiction bestsellers, Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott's new novel gives us an exuberant, richly absorbing portrait of a family for whom the joys and sorrows of everyday life are magnified under the glare of the unexpected.Rosie Ferguson, in the first bloom of young womanhood, is obsessed with tournament tennis. Her mother is a recovering alcoholic still grieving the death of her first husband; her stepfather, a struggling writer, is wrestling with his own demons. And now Rosie finds that her athletic gifts, once a source of triumph and escape, place her in peril, as a shadowy man who stalks her from the bleachers seems to be developing an obsession of his own.Crooked Little Heart asks big questions in intimate ways: What keeps a family together? What are the small heartbreaks that tear at the fabric of our lives? What happens to grief when it goes underground? And what road must we walk with our flawed and crooked hearts?Brilliantly written, inhabited by superbly realized characters, funny and human and wonderfully suspenseful, Crooked Little Heart is Anne Lamott writing at the peak of her considerable powers.
From the Publisher
Here's a sample of the advance praise that poured into Pantheon's offices recently:"Crooked Little Heart is pure Anne Lamott, with her marvelous, unique and totally original voice, so warm and welcoming, kind, and always so wonderfully, reliably, funny."
-- Alice Adams"With Crooked Little Heart, Anne Lamott deserves to be called the Subconscious of America. She's the two-way mirror of our hopes, insecurities, and cheating hearts. She's the astute observer of human nature. She knows that what we don't know can hurt us. In true Lamott fashion, life doesn't stay neatly within boundaries, the best team doesn't always win, and only the voyeur knows who you really are. Fathers die, mothers drink, and an infected pimple can kill you or at least ruin your chances in junior high school. But there's also this: love, redemption, and the certainty that life goes on. Crooked Little Heart is absolutely brilliant."
-- Amy Tan"Anne Lamott is at the top of her form in this complex coming-of-age novel in which tennis becomes the metaphor for life's toughest lessons."
-- Sue Grafton
From the Inside Flap
With the same winning combination of humor and honesty that marked her recent nonfiction bestsellers, Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott's new novel gives us an exuberant, richly absorbing portrait of a family for whom the joys and sorrows of everyday life are magnified under the glare of the unexpected.
Rosie Ferguson, in the first bloom of young womanhood, is obsessed with tournament tennis. Her mother is a recovering alcoholic still grieving the death of her first husband; her stepfather, a struggling writer, is wrestling with his own demons. And now Rosie finds that her athletic gifts, once a source of triumph and escape, place her in peril, as a shadowy man who stalks her from the bleachers seems to be developing an obsession of his own.
Crooked Little Heart asks big questions in intimate ways: What keeps a family together? What are the small heartbreaks that tear at the fabric of our lives? What happens to grief when it goes underground? And what road must we walk with our flawed and crooked hearts?
Brilliantly written, inhabited by superbly realized characters, funny and human and wonderfully suspenseful, Crooked Little Heart is Anne Lamott writing at the peak of her considerable powers.
About the Author
Anne Lamott is the author of four previous novels, as well as Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird. She lives in Northern California with her son, Sam.
From the Hardcover edition.
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