Customer Reviews

Crooked Little Heart: A Novel

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In my other reveiw of "Rosie", the prequel to this book, I was rather hard on Lamott. Her non fiction, Travelling Mercies, Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions, is so compassionate, witty, and funny, that it is hard to believe that she wrote Rosie and Hard Laughter. This book is finally the work of fiction I believed that she could produce.

It follows the story of Rosie during the summer of her 13th year, and trials and tribulations that are realistic and engaging. Although the focus on tennis was a little too detailed and technical, the rest of the story is wrapped around it in tenderness and diverts the focus from that aspect.

Although somewhat similar to Nabokov's Lolita in theme, this book explores in full the lives of each main character. You can more clearly see the effects of the events that occurred in Rosie, and they are painted more brilliantly and lovingly.

The characters are easy to identify with. There's Rae who weaves beautiful tapestries with junk yarn, but seems to want to do the same with the junky men in her lives. There's Rosie who lives in frustrated teenage self-doubt. There's Elizabeth, who sinks and struggles and is, all in all, extremely irritating. Then, there's Luthor, the Steppenwolf of the story, who is dark and scary and mysterious, but has insight that Rosie desperately needs.

You will find in reading this that the details of daily life are irresistably and eloquently captured - the feeling of laying with your lover knees bent into knees, the shine of dust particles in the light of the window, the fight that explodes and dissipates and the feeling of relief when love comes again.

With a compassionate pen, Lamott sculpts their world not out of epic ideas or fantastic adventure, but in the love and angst and peace and war and tribulation and triumph of every day life. She finds the beauty and pain in it, and gives it the no-frills homage it deserves.

Crooked Little Heart led me to examine myself more closely through the characters and their actions, and also provided me with basic tenets of living that I will cherish.

A thought provoking book, with great ideas and beautiful writing, I rate Crooked Little Heart five stars, as a read that will warm your heart, make you laugh, and edify your life.

I re-read this book recently and was pleased to find that I wasn't wrong about it the first time: it's wonderful, just as satisfying as any of the others, although I am partial to each new book as it arrives, like a gorgeous newborn. I didn't read Crooked Little Heart, I absorbed it. I fell in love with Rae and Lank -- their love story is one of the most poignant ones I have ever read. I know they will end up together. I just know it. I am dying to know more about Rae, actually. Will James ever learn to dress? Will any of us? Keep it up, Anne.

In the six months since I read CLH, I have thought of pieces of it hundreds of times. I think Anne Lamott is an amazing writer, one of the best contemporary American writers we have, along with Fred Chappell, Louise Erdrich, Kaye Gibbons, and Lee Smith, to name a few. I think with any piece of fiction the reader must be willing to enter the author's constructed world on their terms. I loved the title of CLH and wanted to know all that lay behind it. Also, I knew I liked Lamott's writing from some of her nonfiction. So, I kept going even though it took me several chapters to become fully engaged in the story. I find so much of her imagery and metaphor incredible that even without caring about tennis at all, I wanted to keep going. Plus, I trusted her to take me somewhere worthwhile. And she did. I love that Luther tells Rosie, You're not a cheater. You're someone who cheated. I saw so much compassion and honesty in that exchange. I think it's what the book was written for, and that it is more than enough to justify the story's length. Another of my favorite lines is also near the end, where Rosie tells Elizabeth, We're not like a real family, we're like some family you'd buy at a garage sale. (This may not be exact, I do not have the book with me). By that time, you realize that Lamott is saying most real families are that way, and that's the beauty of the thing--along with the fact that Rosie as an adolescent is not yet fully aware of how much of life really is like something you get at a garage sale and make do with and come to love devotedly.

I realize that due to certain anatomical features I do not belong to the 51% of the population that is this book's target audience, however, my equal love of wemon's tennis and coming-of-age narratives drew me in. And I must say that for the most part I truly loved the parts that dealt with Rosie. It reminded me at times of the short-lived ABC series, "My So-Called Life," which also sometimes captured the sensibilty of teen-age life with impressive immediacy. Unfortunately the book is cluttered with several less interesing characters. The worst of these being Elizabeth and Rae, the first of which I found unbelievable and the second alternately pretentious and trite. Ms. Lamott would have been better served to pare this novel down to a tenth of its current length where it might have made a luminous short story with Rosie as its sole focus and all these other peripheral characters either eliminated altogether or marginalized to where they no longer bore or irritate. As it stands the menace of Luther is so diluted that by the time we reach the climactic scene between him and Rosie we feel cheated. A problem that would not occur in short story where the reader doesn't have so much time to predict what will happen next. But, then again, maybe I am just not a member of the target audience.

It took a while to get into Crooked Little Heart. If I had read Rosie it might have been better, but I truly felt that I had walked into the middle of a story and was supposed to know things I didn't. Lamott often flashes back to Rosie and her family's past which helped me gradually fill in details I would have liked to have known earlier.

Once I got drawn in, I enjoyed the book very much. Lamott has created a variety of interesting characters all cut from different molds. Although the focus of the book is on Rosie, the supporting characters have life as well - often their lives go on just on the edges of the story, so we don't know everything that's going on, but we know enough to know there's more to know.

The novel, Crooked Little Heart, by Anne Lamott, revolves around a main character named Rosie who is a teenager. Rosie lives with her mother, who is a recovering alcoholic and her stepfather. She has a best friend named Simone who is her exact opposite and together, they play tennis and they live in the Bay Area. Rosie also deals with a man named Luther who has an obsession for her. I really enjoyed reading this book. On a scale of one to ten, I would give it a nine. I liked this book because the author narrated with different characters so that the reader got a different perspective on each obstacle and event. Right away I was into the book, but towards the middle I lost interest for about ten pages. For a while the author began to discuss things that seemed to have absolutely no relevance to the current story line. The novel was a medium challenge for me. I found the vocabulary to be rather adult and sometimes the author made references to things that I didn't know about. Overall, most people my age could handle this easily without much trouble and it wasn't too hard or old for me. Something that people might have difficultiy with in this book were the issues it dealt with regarding Rosie's mother alcoholism or her emotional problems. To get through these difficulties they could read it with someone so that they could discuss the confusion that they had with reading it, and talk about things that bothered them.

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.

Crooked Little Heart is a moving story about a girl named Rosie Ferguson and her jump into adolescence. Rosie is obsessed with tennis, and often competes in tournaments with her best friend Simone. From the sidelines a mysterious man constantly observes Rosie and seems to be up to no good. He frightens Rosie's recovering alcoholic mother, and Rosie is warned to stay away from him. Yet she doesn't always listen to her mother.

If I were to rate this book on a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this book an eight. This book was enjoyable to read, with an interesting storyline that always moved forward. The first paragraph immediately brings you into the world of the story, giving you background on the character's lives. The only drawback in reading this book was the tennis lingo. Because I am not familiar with the game of tennis and do not understand how the scoring works, at times I couldn't understand what was going on in the game. Although this didn't matter with the overall plot of the book, it sometimes distracted me from the story.

Anne Lamott is gifted in her ability to describe situations and events. On page 37 she writes, "At one point she raced after a lob that went over her at the net, and she lobbed it back so brilliantly, sending it over both boys at the net, that even Simone looked bashful and victorious when the boys shook their heads with amazement, and Luther laughed a loud throaty laugh of appreciation and something like joy, as if she had done a magic trick, and when Rosie looked up and accidentally met his eyes, he took her picture with an imaginary camera." In addition she does a thorough job in describing important details about every character, and is always reinforcing the relationships between them. Because of Lamott's wonderful ability to put the story together in a manner that continuously flows, the story is enjoyable to read.

This book reminded me of another book, Anywhere but Here, because both books involve the relationship of mother and daughter. Although their plots are very different; one takes place during a move to California and the other on a tennis court, the theme of family lurks in both. In both stories you get a sense of what it's like to be a mother, and the feelings they face while their child travels through adolescence.

I think anyone who enjoys sports, especially tennis, would enjoy this book. But in my book club group, the girls seemed to enjoy the book a little bit more than the boys. If you're looking for an enjoyable read, with life-like experiences, this is the book for you.

I adored this book the first time I read it, and I'm rereading it again now, a year later. I can't believe how many "not good" reviews there are here--are we reading the same book? CLH is, to me, a fast, smart, heartbreakingly-precise portrait of a "family" living in the prosaic world of growing up--not just Rosie's growing up, but Elizabeth's, Rae's, James's--everybody's. This is a story about what it feels like to care about things too much, and it's brilliant. Don't listen to them, Annie. Keep it coming.

I have read all of Anne Lamott's works and find each and every one down to earth, revealing of the soul and true to life. Reading "Rosie" and "A Crooked Little Heart" my heart broke and at the same time acknowledged the same feelings of life growing up. In "Hard Laughter" I found myself reliving my own father's illness and eventual death to lung cancer and the dark humor that runs with deep grief. I look forward to Anne Lamott's next piece of literature.