A snapshot of the New York City and America through the eyes of the children of the baby boomers grappling with privilege and the fading of radical hopes.
... electric ... Lucy’s fierce first-person point of view is as confident and fearless as she is on the court; she narrates her story with the immediacy and sharpness of a sports commentator, mixed with the pathos and wisdom of a perceptive adolescent charting the perils of her senior year of high school ... Czapnik... captures nostalgia — for both a vanishing New York and Lucy’s evaporating childhood — with the lucidity of a V.R. headset ... Reader, beware: Spending time with Lucy is unapologetic fun, and heartbreak, and awe as well.
... electrifying ... a frank, bittersweet coming-of-age story that crackles with raw adolescent energy, fresh-cut prose, and a kinetic sense of place ... And Czapnik, a seasoned sportswriter, has written exactly the book that every smart, strange, wonderful teenage weirdo like Lucy deserves.
Here's a sentence of critical praise I never expected to utter: The descriptions of basketball games in this novel are riveting ... Lucy's sweaty, all-in passion for basketball, which Czapnik captures so vividly in The Falconer, gives me a sharp sense of what I missed out on ... In The Falconer, Dana Czapnik displays this same gift: In bringing Lucy to life, she sees the whole game.
