How Could Nice People Have Such Crooked Hearts?

    Read the first paragraph of this novel and you're hooked. Get to the fourth paragraph and you start to get scared. Because these opening paragraphs of Crooked Little Heart by the Christian author Anne Lamott describe the world of two young teenage girls, tennis players, ranked number one in girls fourteen-and-under doubles in northern California, with a bright shining future and – at first – only one little cloud in the sky.

    Luther. An older guy, scruffy, wearing beat-up and sometimes dirty clothes. He started showing up at the matches to watch Rosie and Simone play. Nobody know where he came from, where he lived, what he did - if anything - for a living. He never talked to anyone. Just sat in the stands and watched, especially when Rosie and Simone were playing.

    Elizabeth, Rosie's mother, was sure he was stalking her daughter. She tried to get the police to bar him from the matches, but there was nothing they could do. He wasn't breaking any laws.

    Rosie didn't give too much thought to Luther. Another problem was eating her up inside. Her standing as a star tennis player was so precarious; she just about panicked when she was in a tough match, especially with a lower-ranked player. And so one day, in a tight singles match, she cheated. She called her opponent's shot out when it clearly hit the line.

    It worked, and she did it again. And again. But what was making her triumphant on the outside was tearing her up on the inside. She lived in dread of being found out.

    Meanwhile her partner, Simone, had a different nagging little problem on the inside that kept getting bigger. Things went too far at a party with some older boys, when she slipped away with one of them to spend some time in a boat at the end of the dock. She got pregnant.

    Anne Lamott weaves these elements into a truly beautiful and exciting story. She is a wonderful writer. But be forewarned. There's no doubt she's a Christian, and she has a clearly born-again Christian character in this book who doesn't hesitate to share her faith in Jesus. But there's no neat little John 3:16 everybody-gets-saved at the end of this book. In fact, there's some pretty earthy language that might upset some Christian readers.

    But her characters are achingly real, totally believable, and there is that note of grace invading a world of mostly lovable sinners. This is really a book worth reading.