A Sharp Endless Need pub day!
including a rave review in the NYTBR by Casey McQuiston
Pub day for my sophomore novel, A Sharp Endless Need, is finally here. You can order it wherever you get your books, though supporting your local indie is always preferred. You can also support indies by ordering through Bookshop.org.
I wanted to share some happy pub day news. First, this absolutely RAVE review in The New York Times, courtesy of Casey McQuiston. It’s wise, generous, and sees the book’s big swinging heart.
Here are a few of my favorite parts:
“In a tight 250 pages, Crane’s writing drives forward hard and fast. They mix their staccato sentences with strategic bursts of tender lyricism. Crane, who played college ball, describes Mack’s games with an insider’s fluency, bringing readers into the minute-by-minute drama on the court. But knowledge of the sport isn’t required to understand the novel; all you need is a familiarity with loving something to the point of pain.”
“From the front row, we can’t tear our eyes from the vortex of passion between Mack and Liv. As Crane writes it, sports are a vessel for desire. They’re erotic, an excuse to shield lust and the means by which it’s played out…We keep watching them because, like any devotes sports lover, we can’t help wondering if they might pull out a win.”
“Most of the book focuses on the misery and destruction of desire, but despite its title, “A Sharp Endless Need” offers the possibility that unsatisfied wanting does not always have to cut and curse, at least not endlessly. We give it the power to destroy us when we deny it or repress it. Maybe, with time and understanding, unmet desire can simply be an L in the column. Good game.”
Interviews
I also have a few interviews out, including conversations with:
Jen St. Jude in Chicago Review of Books
“It’s a line from the epigraph. “I want zero regrets. No, I want to marry my regrets. To find a way to adore them for their sharp endless need.” It just felt right as a title. It felt like it captured the achy ongoing yearning of this book—yearning for so many things, in so many directions. Not just for a person, but a certain life, a certain greatness. What does it mean to have a need that doesn’t go away? What does it mean to have a need that hurts so bad and to adore it anyway?”
Kim Narby in Write or Die Magazine
“I’ve been thinking about how my queerness and basketball are so intertwined to the point that I can’t even separate them. My first experiences of queer desire were with teammates and opponents—in college I almost strictly dated women’s basketball players (with the exception of one artist). There was something very erotic to me about playing the thing I loved with someone I loved, someone I wanted more than anything in the world. The collaboration, the chemistry, the body language, the sweat, the private conversations, the sex of the game: once I’d experienced that heightened of a state, I thought, well, nothing could ever come close.”
Elizabeth Endicott in BOMB Magazine
“God, more than anything, I want to expand the idea of what a sex scene can be or look like. With this book, I challenged myself to write a book that is sort of, well, full of unconventional sex scenes. Sure, there is some fucking happening. Some eating out and whatnot. But I want the reader to feel and understand that the game of basketball is sex. And that the game doesn’t just live on the court—it seeps into every aspect of Mack and Liv’s being. To the point that they are almost always, I don’t know, facing the game, in some way. Even if it’s the chemistry they’ve created on the court. It’s like, how does that on-court chemistry mutate off the court? Where does its eroticism show up?”
Mesha Maren in Southern Review of Books
“It makes me think about yearning as motion, as running in place, digging in deeper, exhausting yourself into oblivion and yet finding a way to continue on — and love, reciprocal love, as real movement, the ongoing traveling to a place with and for each other. Mack is in perpetual motion but not really moving anywhere — how can they, when they are a stranger to themself and everyone else, maybe even Liv? How can they, when they don’t know unabashed love, when they are living a life compromised by alienation and hopelessness, a clinging to an identity contingent upon a shot clock and a stage to perform on?”
Thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered, read an arc, shared the book online, left a (good) review, and shared kind words with me. You all are wonderful and perfect and hot.