Crooked Little Heart

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.