The first 50% of this was so simulatateously dull and irritating that I would have given up on it if I didn't have to finish it for my book club.

After skim reading and skipping through long boring passages of basketball games (sports, no thank you!), mooning over the obviously awful Percy and drug taking it finally started to get almost interesting. Once Lucy hangs out more with Alexis it gets better.. some bits of the last 50% of this were very good and I started to warm to Lucy (who does not have a believable voice as a 17 year old!) but it's not amazing enough for me to understand the hype over it.

Also skipped the last 3 pages where was essentially just a long list of streets and buildings in New York...

I don't think I'll remember this one. I'm just glad it was short! ( )

Read my review at:

https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/falconer-novel

( )

Sometimes a book finds me that I would not have found by myself. That is how The Falconer by Dana Czapnik came into my life--as an unexpected package from the publisher.

Reading it was about a seventeen-year-old girl in 1993 New York City whose passion was basketball and who has a crush on her best friend Percy, I wondered if I would care for the book. Sure, there was advance praise from Column McCann, Salmon Rushdie, Chloe Benjamin--but could I relate to the story?

I opened the book and started reading. The opening scene finds the protagonist, "pizza bagel" Lucy, playing basketball with Percy. I've seen basketball games. Only when the tickets were free. But the writing was so good, I found myself drawn into the scene, turning pages. There was something about this book, about Lucy's voice.

On the surface, I had nothing in common with Lucy. And yet Lucy felt familiar, her concerns and fears universal.

In telling the story of one particular girl from a particular place and time, the author probes the eternal challenges of growing up female: conformity and acceptance by one's peer group while staying true to oneself; crushes on boys who don't see you; concerns about our attractiveness; what we give up for love; is the world is chaotic and without order, or can we find joy and hope?

There was a multitude of lines and paragraphs that I noted for their wisdom, beauty, and insight. I reread sections, scenes that elicited emotion or thoughtfulness.

I felt Lucy was channeling Holden Caulfield, who I met as a fourteen-year-old in Freshman English class in 1967. The Catcher in the Rye was life-changing for me, a voice unlike any I had encountered in a novel. The New York City setting, the wandering across the city, the characters met, the rejection of the parental values and lifestyle, Lucy's misunderstanding of a song line--Lucy is a female Holden, updated to the 1990s.

Lucy tells us that in Central Park is a statue of a boy releasing a falcon. She loves this statue but resents that only boys are portrayed in the way of the statue, that girls are shown nude or as children like the Alice in Wonderland statue. She sees in the joy and hope in The Falconer.

Lucy experiences many things in the novel, including some pretty bad stuff. But she is resilient, holding to the joy and beauty she finds around her, the "the perfect jump shot" moments. She will inspire young readers and offer those of us whose choices were made long ago a journey of recollection and the affirmation of mutually shared experience.

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. ( )