World Famous Comics: Crooked Little Heart: A Novel
Crooked Little Heart: A Novel
By: Anne Lamott Publisher: Anchor Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Anchor Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 336 Publication Date: May 18, 1998 Release Date: May 18, 1998
Product 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.
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.
"Crying withheld feels sometimes like dying..." I really loved this book, mostly because I could empathize with Rosie's middle school angst and insecurites. But I also admire (and envy) Lamott's writing in general - she creates beautiful phrases such as "it was so hot that the only things moving outside were the crickets and the anorexics" and "the sun smelled warm, like laundry in the dryer, like melting yellow crayons." Her writing startles me sometimes, so I have to stop and reread. I would never think to associate melting yellow crayons with the sun, for example...but the comparison makes perfect sense.
Simone, Rosie's best friend, wasn't one of my favorite characters at first, but her story turned out to be heartbreaking, and I was genuinely sad for her. I can still see her sitting on the bench with Rosie, waiting for Jason. Collapsed dreams, humiliation, and the double standard all follow - as usual, the male is not castigated by society. The male is not kicked out of the country club.
I liked Rae, Rosie's mom's best friend, the successful artist. When teased for her religious views, I was so proud of Rosie for defending her, reminding everyone that America "was founded on the principle of religious freedom," and no one should trivialize a woman's deepest feelings.
I also liked Luther, the mysterious observer at the tennis tournaments. I thought he was creepy at first, but he paid attention to Rosie when no one else did (her mother might be spacing out as she retreats into the past, and her stepfather might be checking his messages). Luther helped her, was there for her, so Rosie was never alone during a game.
"Too bad about the hair.." - when Rosie's coach said this to her (upon seeing Rosie's newly shorn head), it only confirmed my belief that he's sexist, that his voice echoes a society which regards hair as something that defines women, gives them value, forms stereotypes. Alas, Simone had glorious hair, and look what happened to her...her value appeared to decline in the end.
When a woman chops off most of her hair, it is one of the most liberating things in the world. I wish I'd gotten rid of mine when I was Rosie's age, instead of waiting until I was 24.
Growth experience for mother & daughter This is a wonderful sequel to "Rosie" by LaMott, but stands well on its own. It's a "coming of age" genre.
Kept thinking it would get better...It didn't. It took me about 6 weeks to finish this book. I usually finish a book I like in about 2-3 days, but I just couldn't get into this one. I kept thinking it would get better...It didn't. I read one other Anne Lamott novel and never finished it. Since so many readers had raved about this book, I decided to keep reading to see why it was so highly praised. The other reason I kept reading was because it seemed like there was something dark in Elizabeth's past that was lurking and waiting to come to the surface, but I didn't feel like this ever really got explained. It seemed like the storyline kept building up and up, and then just sort of fizzled out. I sort of cared about Rosie, more toward the end then at any other time. I barely cared (if at all) about her mother, Elizabeth. There were some good descriptions and some wonderfully poetic passages, but they didn't make up for the lack of care that I felt for the characters. I cared more about the supporting characters (Lank, Rae, and Charles) than I did about the developed main characters. I really disliked some of the comparisons/similes that the author made; especially the ones about likening the characters to birds. Since I tried to read two Anne Lamott books and didn't like either of them, maybe I just don't like her writing in general. From the looks of many of these comments, she seems to have lots of fans that love her writing! I'm just not one of them.
Lovely story A rather heartwarming novel of adolescence, grief, sexual awakening, and tennis set in the Bay Area of California.
Beautifully written, but just not to my taste After a slow start, I gradually fell in like with the writing style and people in this coming-of-age novel. I say "in like" because I have discovered I'm not overly partial to character-driven novels. Still, Lamott writes gorgeous descriptive sentences and uses lovely similes. Her grasp on the dynamics of a blended family and the social pressures on modern teenage girls seems effortless and without artifice.
It's a nice piece of work and well worth reading. It's just not to my taste.
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