With Your Crooked Heart

By Helen Dunmore

Book Overview

In "sharp, elegant prose" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), With Your Crooked Heart introduces Louise, a tough and introspective Londoner trapped in a subtle battle between two brothers. Paul and Johnnie were born twelve years apart, in a one-bedroom flat in a dingy London suburb. Their ascent to money and power looks easy from a distance, but the seductive brothers burn those who get too close. When Paul marries Louise, Johnnie is part of the contract, and their daughter, Anna, is tangled in it from birth. Paul deals in the development of contaminated land; self-destructive Johnnie deals in crime. When Johnnie has to flee the country, Louise goes with him. Their trip sets in motion inevitabilities that have smoldered beneath the surface from the beginning, a dire and redemptive chain of events that devastates every branch of this crooked family tree. With Your Crooked Heart's sensuous, daring prose brilliantly exhibits Dunmore's "poet's ear for language and photographer's eye for images" (Newsday) and confirms The Guardian's claim that Dunmore is "an electrifying and original talent."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000PRZ4NQ
• ISBN13: 9780802137708
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

With Your Crooked Heart

WITH YOUR CROOKED HEART is a journey into the feeling and lives of three exrtremely different people whose insides are torn and compelling. The book should be read and then the reader can go backwards and read TALKING TO THE DEAD. These two books are written by the most intelligent, decisive, and informative female author that exists today. It will be difficult to put either of these books down, so make certain you allow enough time to "get away" and delve into a strange and heartwrenching world.

Totally compelling

Once I got past the rather slow opeing chapters, I could not put this book down. It is beautifully written and interestingly constructed. Chapters are written alternately from the perspective of each main character and yet flow together nicely, providing an intimate portrait of the inner feelings of each character. The book is as painful as it is compelling. Each adult character is very human and flawed in some tragic way and events play out accordingly. Everyone wishes that everyone else were different, and then everything would be all right. Wishing doesn't make it so, however, and the plot continues relentlessly to its tragic conclusion. Dunsmore is a wizard with language. She has an incredible talent for making you feel that you've lived inside the heads of her characters. She can paint pcitures with words so vivid, they are almost cinematic. I definitely recommend this book!