The Necessary Hunger - Tapa blanda

"Revoyr focuses on a number of issues, including competition, interracial relationships, and same-sex relationships...A thoughtful work..."
--Library Journal

"The Necessary Hunger is a moving, insightful story about family, friendship, and young people coming of age with the cards stacked against them."
--Asian Pages

Critical Praise for Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr:

A Booklist Book of the Year 2011

Finalist for SCIBA's 2011 Fiction Award

Winner of the 2011 Midwest Booksellers Choice Award

Winner of the first annual Indie Booksellers Choice Award

Selected for IndieBound's March 2011 Indie Next List, "Great Reads from Booksellers You Trust"

Featured in O, The Oprah Magazine's March 2011 Reading Room section as one of "10 Titles to Pick Up Now"

"Revoyr does a remarkable job of conveying [protagonist] Michelle's lost innocence and fear through this accomplished story of family and the dangers of complacency in the face of questionable justice."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Revoyr writes rhapsodically of a young girl's enthrallment to the natural world and charts, with rising intensity, her resilient narrator's painful awakening to human failings and senseless violence. In this shattering northern variation on To Kill A Mockingbird, Revoyr drives to the very heart of tragic ignorance, unreason, and savagery."
--Booklist (starred review)

"Hauntingly provocative...an excellent choice for book discussion groups as it will force readers to dig deep and look inward."
--Library Journal

"Gripping and insightful."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A searing, anguished novel...The narration and pace are expertly calibrated as it explores a topic one wishes still wasn't so current."
--Los Angeles Times

"Much can be said and commended about the book's themes of loyalty and love...I'll just say that this author is a big talent. Her book is a little thing of beauty. It's a story with American historical significance; it's a novel with emotional heft; it's a satisfying read in the spirit of what Picasso said about another writer, James Joyce: 'The incomprehensible that everyone can understand.'"
--Brooklyn Rail

A Stevo's Book Reviews on the Internet "Best of the Bunch" Fiction Pick

"The Necessary Hunger is the kind of irresistible read you start on the subway at six p.m. on the way home from work and keep plowing through until you’ve turned the last page...It beats with the pulse of life...American writers dealing with race relations tend to focus on black-white or Asian-white situations; Revoyr has the imagination to depict racial issues in which whites are not the reference point."
--Time Magazine

"Quietly intimate, vigorously honest, and uniquely American...Tough and tender without a single false note."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Revoyr triumphs in blending many complex issues, including urban poverty and violence, adolescent sexuality, and the vitality of basketball, without losing sight of her characters. She creates a family, in all senses of the word, of characters who are complex, admirable, and aggravating; readers will root for them on and off the court."
--Detroit Free Press

"Revoyr focuses on a number of issues, including competition, interracial relationships, and same-sex relationships...A thoughtful work..."
--Library Journal

"The Necessary Hunger is a moving, insightful story about family, friendship, and young people coming of age with the cards stacked against them."
--Asian Pages

"A wholesome coming-of-age novel about two high school basketball stars, Revoyr's debut is a meditation on consuming passion and a reflection on lost opportunities...The basketball action, which builds climactically, honors the split-second timing and excitement of the game. Revoyr also evokes the feel of contemporary LA, capturing crackheads, gang-bangers, and car-jackings in sharp, street-smart dialogue."
--Publishers Weekly

"Revoyr has unerringly caught the angst of teenagers, as well as the rarified, self-involved world in which they live...A sympathetic, tender rendering of the frustration of unrequited love."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"This book may in fact contain the most loving prose we'll see on basketball until John Edgar Wideman writes about his daughter Jamila, the gifted point guard for Stanford...A soul-baring that grows deeply moving."
--Chicago Tribune

The Necessary Hunger follows two basketball stars--Nancy Takahiro and Raina Webber--and several of their friends through their last year of high school. For some of them, their senior year will be full of glory, and the anticipation of college. For others, however, stranded in an inner-city Los Angeles neighborhood that promises little in the way of opportunity, it will mark not only the end of their time in school but also the end of their hope.

As Nancy and Raina both prepare to leave the urban neighborhood that has nurtured them, they find themselves looking toward a future that is no longer easily defined. The Necessary Hunger is about families, friendship, racial identity, and young people who are nearing adulthood in a dangerous and challenging world. It is about sports as a means of salvation, about the nature of competition, and ultimately about the various kinds of love.

Our reissue of The Necessary Hunger includes a new introduction by Lynell George, and a new afterword by Nina Revoyr.