A New York Times Editorâs Choice Pick
âA novel of huge heart and fierce intelligence. It has restored my faith in pretty much everything.â âAnn Patchett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth
â[An] electric debut novelâĻReader, beware: Spending time with Lucy is unapologetic fun, and heartbreak, and awe as well.â âChloe Malle, The New York Times Book Review
In this âfrank, bittersweet coming-of-age story that crackles with raw adolescent energy, fresh-cut prose, and a kinetic sense of placeâ (Entertainment Weekly), a teenaged tomboy explores love, growing up, and New York City in the early 1990s.
New York, 1993. Street-smart seventeen-year-old Lucy Adler is often the only girl on the public basketball courts. Lucyâs inner life is a contradiction. Sheâs by turns quixotic and cynical, insecure and self-possessed, and, despite herself, is in unrequited love with her best friend and pickup teammate, Percy, the rebellious son of a prominent New York family.
As Lucy begins to question accepted notions of success, bristling against her own hunger for male approval, she is drawn into the world of a pair of provocative feminist artists living in what remains of New Yorkâs bohemia.
Told with wit and pathos, The Falconer is at once a novel of ideas, a portrait of a time and place, and an ode to the obsessions of youth. In her critically acclaimed debut, Dana Czapnik captures the voice of an unforgettable modern literary heroine, a young woman in the first flush of freedom.