Crooked Little Heart: A novel - Hardcover

Lamott, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679435212 ISBN 13: 9780679435211

Publisher: Pantheon, 1997

Synopsis

With the same brilliant combination of humor and warmth that marked Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird, her two bestselling works of nonfiction, Anne Lamott now 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.

The Fergusons make their home in a small California town where life is supposed to resemble paradise, but for thirteen-year-old Rosie (last seen in Lamott's beloved novel Rosie), reality is a bit harsher.  Her mother, a recovering alcoholic, is still beset by grief over the early death of her first husband.  Rosie's stepfather is a struggling writer plagued by doubts and hilarious paranoia. And Rosie, aching in the bloom of young womanhood and obsessed with tournament tennis, finds that her athletic gifts, initially a source of triumph, now place her in peril, as a shadowy man who stalks her from the bleachers seems to be developing an obsession of his own.

Written with enormous emotional honesty, inhabited by superbly realized characters, riotously funny and wonderfully suspenseful, Crooked Little Heart is Anne Lamott writing at the height of her considerable powers.

About this title

Review:

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 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

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679435212
• ISBN 13: 9780679435211
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 324