The Falconer

In her flawed first novel, Czapnik recreates the New York City of 1993 as seen through the eyes of Lucy Adler, an Upper West Side high school student who lives for basketball. Lucy is a member of her school’s girls’ basketball team and also plays pickup games in Riverside Park—where she is often the sole girl on the court—with her wealthy friend, Percy Abney, who seems oblivious to the fact that Lucy is in love with him. Also playing major roles in Lucy’s life are her best friend and teammate, Alexis Feliz, and two downtown female artists, Violet and Max, who share an apartment in SoHo and impart to Lucy important lessons about life, love, and art. Lucy spends most of the book wandering around Manhattan, giving her story a plotless feel. And Lucy and her friends sound way too mature and savvy for their teenage years. (Lucy, for instance, describes a character having a beard “that belongs on a Hasidic rabbi from Warsaw circa 1934.”) Despite a lived-in sense of place, this coming-of-age novel seems to be about jaded young characters who have already come of age, leaving them—and the reader—with little room for emotional development. [em](Jan.) [/em]