{"id":7444,"date":"2010-07-06T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=7444"},"modified":"2010-06-25T13:46:57","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T19:46:57","slug":"imperfect-birds-by-anne-lamott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/imperfect-birds-by-anne-lamott\/","title":{"rendered":"Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Years ago, I enjoyed reading Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong> It was funny and quirky and self-revealing, with some darn good writing suggestions along the way.\u00a0 Her new novel, Imperfect Birds<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, is\u00a0a work of fiction, and thankfully so, as\u00a0it’s characters ring\u00a0painfully\u00a0true.<\/p>\n

As the story opens, seventeen year-old Rosie Ferguson is ready to enjoy the summer before her senior year of high school.\u00a0 She’s smart –a straight-A student; she’s athletic –\u00a0a former state-ranked doubles tennis champion;\u00a0 she’s great with the kids at her volunteer job,\u00a0 and she’s beautiful to boot!.\u00a0\u00a0 But Rosie also has a knack for driving her mother, Elizabeth, crazy.\u00a0 She’s also quite adept at manipulating the truth and\u00a0Mom seems more than willing to believe her lies. By the time school starts again in the fall, there are\u00a0disturbing\u00a0signs that is Rosie is not only abusing drugs, but that she is also\u00a0making very dangerous choices, forcing her parents to finally confront the obvious.<\/p>\n

As a parent myself (though thankfully no longer of teenagers) there were times when reading this\u00a0 made me vaguely uncomfortable.\u00a0 Had I, like Elizabeth, been too trusting when my son called to ask if he could spend the night at a friend’s? \u00a0Hmmmm.\u00a0 Still, there’s a message here for both teens and adults, and the novel does end on a very hopeful note.\u00a0 Readers will also note the familiarity of characters and themes from the author’s previous works, such as\u00a0Rosie<\/em><\/strong><\/a> and A Crooked Little Heart<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago, I enjoyed reading Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It was funny and quirky and self-revealing, with some darn good writing suggestions along the way.\u00a0 Her new novel, Imperfect Birds, is\u00a0a work of fiction, and thankfully so, as\u00a0it’s characters ring\u00a0painfully\u00a0true. As the story opens,[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[434,476,156,109],"class_list":["post-7444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-drug-abuse","tag-family-drama","tag-growing-up","tag-teens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-1W4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7444"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7529,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7444\/revisions\/7529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}