A Sharp Endless Need
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected May 13, 2025
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A propulsive and nostalgic coming-of-age novel about an all-consuming relationship between two teammates on a girls’ high school basketball team, from the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself
“Brilliant . . . so alive and vibrating that it took my breath away.”—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of her father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. On the court, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry; off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship that is out-of-bounds for their small Pennsylvania town in 2004, and for Liv’s conservative mother. As Mack’s desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline, she is forced to reckon with the disconnect between her past and her future—and fight for the life she wants for herself, whether or not Liv will be on the court beside her.
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 all the romance and feeling of the beloved 2000 movie Love & Basketball, Marisa Crane’s sophomore novel is a voice-driven, literary treatment of the big feelings of first love, intimacy, heartbreak, grief, and, of course, 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.
