Books › Crooked Little Heart
Crooked Little Heart
A novel
326 pages
A warm, riotously funny, and unexpectedly suspenseful portrait of a messy family navigating the perils of adolescence and obsession under the California sun.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like stepping into the messy, vibrant, and deeply human living room of a family trying their best to heal. The narrative balances a warm, riotously funny tone with an undercurrent of genuine suspense, creating a briskly paced experience that is both emotionally honest and richly absorbing. As the story explores the pressures of young athletic talent and the creeping dread of an outside obsession, the mood shifts from tender domesticity to gripping tension. The prose is exuberant and sharp, capturing the hilarious paranoia of adulthood alongside the aching bloom of adolescence. It is a perfect read for anyone who delights in character-driven stories where everyday joys and sorrows collide with unexpected peril.
- Mood
- tender
- tense
- absorbing
- sun-drenched
- Tone
- warm
- humorous
- honest
- exuberant
- suspenseful
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- family dynamics · coming of age · grief and recovery · the pressures of talent · obsession
- The writing
- Emotionally honest and riotously funny, blending warmth with sharp, absorbing character portraits.
- The arc
- Moves from the everyday struggles of a grieving, recovering family into a tense, suspenseful confrontation with outside obsession.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love deeply human, funny, and suspenseful family dramas centered on the messy realities of coming of age.
Content notes
- stalking
- alcoholism
- grief
- death of a parent
About the book
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.From the Hardcover edition.
Description from Open Library.
Books like Crooked Little Heart
See why they match
Grace (Eventually)Anne LamottA funny, bittersweet, and poignant exploration of faith and the wild adventure of being fully alive.
Harvesting the heartJodi PicoultAn emotionally raw exploration of how the ghosts of our childhoods haunt our attempts at motherhood and marriage.
The Book of RuthJane HamiltonA raw, fiercely empathetic portrait of a marginalized woman finding her own voice amidst the suffocating grip of rural poverty and family dysfunction.
Where the heart isBillie LettsA big-hearted, folksy embrace of a novel about the families we build when the ones we were born with leave us behind.
Today will be differentMaria SempleA hilarious and frantic sprint through a single day of derailed plans, buried secrets, and the messy reality of midlife reinvention.
Infinite JestDavid Foster WallaceA sprawling, tragicomic labyrinth of footnotes and hyper-articulate despair that asks what it means to be entertained to death.