Welcome to another review by yours truly. Unlike my fellow posters, I do dabble in other forms of literature besides vampire/angel erotica. This time around, I picked up a best seller from 1997 called Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott. Anne is better known for her churchy memoirs, e.g. Traveling Mercies, Plan B, etc. This book, however, is edgy and pushes the limits of "I should feel good after I read this" popular literature.
One of the main characters, Elizabeth, is a woman with no perceptible career. She is the mother of one daughter, Rosie, whose father has died. Elizabeth has remarried and his name is James. And he's an author. So the dead father must have had a serious life insurance policy, because I don't really know how this family has the money they seem to have. But anyway, Rosie is a 14 year-old, she is a star tennis player. Her doubles partner, Simone, is a 14 year old sooooooper slut. About a third of the way through the book, she was pregnant. 14 and pregnant. God damn.
Then there's Luther, the creepy homeless guy who watches all of Rosie's matches. Elizabeth is sure that he's gonna get Rosie. But he doesn't do anything but watch. Creepy.
Elizabeth is depressed. James has writer's anxiety. Rosie cheats at tennis. Rosie's old best friend's father exposed himself to her. The dead dad is sort of haunting about. But they live in San Francisco Bay Area, so I REALLY don't know what they think they have to complain about. All the supplementary characters are still pretty messed up. Can't beat 14 and preggers.
Anyways... all this stuff happens, and really nothing happens. Life happens. Rosie gets caught. Elizabeth refuses counseling. Simone decides to keep the baby. James finishes his second book. In the end, things aren't all that different than when they started. I mean, they find out that Luther isn't that creepy after all. Which is nice, because I was not in the mood for a molestation.
I think that if you want to read a realistic-ish novel about teenagers, lots of frickin tennis, mental illness, and so forth, this might be a good choice for you. You cannot begrudge Lamott's writing style. It's fantastic. Clear, crisp, easy to relate to the characters, believable characters with depth, all this good stuff. The deep dark confusion of Rosie's need to win at tennis is nicely matched by the outer darkness portrayed by Luther. Mostly this novel is about redemption, letting go, and acceptance. Nice pretty human things.
What this novel is not about is church, God, religion. Completely unlike her memoirs, her novel (at least this one) had only tangential mentions of "Jesus-stuff." It was good to not be preached to. But I could see the spiritual themes in the work.
Overall, this is a carefully constructed work of popular literature. It's not sensational, but it's good. Unlike like the author's hair:
Til next time, suckers.
don't diss my selection of books and I will not take about your hair
ReplyDeleteBut seriously,
ReplyDeletewhat happened to the teen mother? Also, is the author suggesting that sex leads to pregnancy? What a novel idea .....
That author's hair is bad, right?
ReplyDeleteThe 14-y.o. kept the baby, they named it something obnoxious.
I think there's a subtle "don't have abortions" message in there somewhere... but I'm not sure.
Not reading that book.
ReplyDeleteSomeday I'll read a book you want to read. If only I could find that vampire series I read in high school. It was like sex ed for me.
ReplyDelete