The Falconer

A Novel

By: Dana Czapnik

Narrated by: Candace Thaxton

A New York Times Editor’s Choice Pick

“A novel of huge heart and fierce intelligence. It has restored my faith in pretty much everything.” —Ann Patchett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth

“[An] electric debut novel…Reader, beware: Spending time with Lucy is unapologetic fun, and heartbreak, and awe as well.” —Chloe Malle, The New York Times Book Review

In this “frank, bittersweet coming-of-age story that crackles with raw adolescent energy, fresh-cut prose, and a kinetic sense of place” (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. Lucy’s inner life is a contradiction. She’s 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 York’s 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.

Good faux memoir, but...

it is a good book and it is worth the read. However, it does not reach the brightness of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. When I read frequently that it comparedto that book I thought about it as I heard the audiobook, and I realize that it does not compare so well. Where Salinger leaves us wondering, in a sublime way, this author explains everything about her thought process, feelings, and the resulting situation the chain from it. I prefer the unknown And the wondering, instead.

Girls & Sports

I heard a review about the book. As I read and found quickly it is about how on the street teen girls are into sports. It's just not my cup of tea.