A Sharp Endless Need
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A vibrant and intimate novel about growing up, first love, and all the joy and heartbreak of competitive high school basketball, from the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself
“Deeply affecting . . . Crane’s writing drives forward hard and fast. . . . Knowledge of the sport isn’t required to understand the novel; all you need is a familiarity with loving something to the point of pain.”—Casey McQuiston, The New York Times Book Review
Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of Mack’s father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. Playing side by side for their high school basketball team, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry on the court. Off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship—one that feels out-of-bounds in their small Pennsylvania town. Mack teeters on the precipice of adulthood as desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline. Caught between the dual impulses of ambition and self-destruction, Mack must decide what kind of life they want to fight for.
Written with the lush longing of André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, the obsessive attention of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, and the sweeping romance of the beloved film Love & Basketball, A Sharp Endless Need is a stunning testament to the big feelings of coming of age, falling in love, and, of course, playing sports.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the perceptive latest from Crane (I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself), a high school senior deals with grief and an all-consuming new love in rural Pennsylvania. It's 2004 and Mackenzie "Mack" Morris is a celebrated point guard on her high school basketball team, focused only on cementing her legacy. Then two events shake her world: the sudden death of her father, who suffers a heart attack while on the treadmill, and the arrival of transfer student and new teammate Liv Cooper. As Mack reckons with the loss of her father and the "mountain of debt" he left behind, she's thrown off-course, struggling to field college scholarship offers while experimenting with drugs and falling in love with Liv. The more Liv pushes and pulls, the less Mack cares about the town's taboos against queerness: "I simply wished Liv would, somehow, against all sense, against all understanding of the world and how it works, choose me." As the novel plows toward a catastrophic climax, Mack determines to live with "zero regrets." This tender coming-of-age story is worth a look.
