A sharp endless need A novel

Mack Morris has life figured out: graduate high school, be drafted by a D1 college, and play basketball. Her father's abrupt death rattles her, and her erratic disillusionment coincides with the arrival of fellow rising basketball star Liv Cooper. Throughout the 2004 season, Mack and Liv grow closer despite Mack's self-destructive behaviors, Liv's relationship with an all-American boy, and the small town's conservative religiosity. Crane's follow-up to I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself (2023) is a blend of the films Love & Basketball and But I'm a Cheerleader. With chapters arranged like a basketball game, Crane's terse but lyrical style lends itself well to the frenetic nature of the sport. Mack's teenage spiral of experimentation, which heavily features drug and alcohol use, will relate to some but alienate others. Best described as a new-adult, contemporary sports romance, A Sharp Endless Need is a jagged story of queer exploration, yearning, and the desperation to find oneself, wrapped in early-2000s nostalgia.

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. Agent: Maggie Cooper, Aevitas Creative Management. (May)