Crooked Heart - Softcover

"Entertaining ... The story starts in the London blitz, in a dazzling, tragicomic prologue.... Crooked Heart is a dark comedy, moving between drollery, pathos, farce and harrowing moments of tragic insight."--The Guardian

"In conjuring a vivid portrait of two lost souls -- Vera Sedge, a petty criminal, and Noel Bostock, orphan and boy genius -- who find an unlikely kinship amid the privation of wartime London, Evans has written a sensitive, intelligent novel that revises Sartre's old axiom: Home is other people."--Boris Fishman, author of A Replacement Life

"Deceptively complex and utterly charming."--Sunday Mirror

"[A] dark comedy with heart....[Evans] is especially adept at capturing Noel's appealing blend of sophisticated bravado and naive fragility-all without lapsing into sentimentality. Most valuable, though, is the tragicomic portrayal of the petty betrayals and profound losses that characterized ordinary people's everyday wartime experiences."--Publishers Weekly

"With not a single combatant and only a few bombs, Lissa Evans has written a wonderful novel about the Second World War. Her two main characters are utterly irresistible, as is their unlikely alliance; I was cheering them on with every page."--Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

"Cherishable.... Engaging and comic, Evans' U.S. debut takes a different slant on Britain during World War II....Aided by spot-on dialogue and low-key charm, Evans does a noticeably good job of spanning a wide range of emotional notes, from genuine sadness to absurd humor."--Kirkus

"An absolute dream of a book ... joyful and wonderful - I completely and utterly loved it."--Alexandra Heminsley, BBC Radio 2 Arts Show

"Crooked Heart is tender, humane, funny, comforting and touching. Escapism in the best possible way. I loved it."--Marian Keyes, author of The Mystery of Mercy Close

"This autumn's feel-good novel teams up two unlikely characters at the outbreak of World War II.... Evans has written an old-fashioned comedy of manners, which is heartwarming, without being mawkish, and extremely funny."--Daily Mail

"I'm pretty sure that Crooked Heart shows the real, practical, opportunistic, Blitz spirit. The chaotic, semi-feral teaming up of Vera and Noel is as sparky and funny charming and touching, but then every now and again comes the vertiginous feeling of peering into something unutterably, dangerously sad."--Louisa Young, author of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

The acidly heartwarming tale of the relationship between a WW2 orphan evacuee and his foster mother set against the backdrop of the Blitz. Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, 2015.