The Necessary Hunger

(Paperback)

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Description

The Necessary Hunger follows two basketball stars - Japanese American Nancy Takahiro and African American 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 neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood that has nurtured them, they find themselves looking toward a future that is no longer easily defined.

Reviews

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

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

Author Bio

Nina Revoyr is the author of six novels, including The Age of Dreaming, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Southland, a Los Angeles Times best seller and Best Book of 2003; Wingshooters, which won an Indie Booksellers' Choice Award and was selected by O, The Oprah Magazine as one of 10 Titles to Pick Up Now, and A Student of History, available on March 5, 2019 from Akashic Books. Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles