海角大神

'Crooked Heart' is the most purely charming read of the season

Meet odd-duck orphan Noel Bostock: He鈥檚 not cute or plucky, doesn鈥檛 sing a note, and was raised by a suffragette with an outsize vocabulary.

The shelves are already crowded with literary orphans, cramming in everyone from Harry Potter and Mowgli, to Huck Finn and Anne Shirley, Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre. But even among literature鈥檚 lovable urchins, Noel Bostock is a bit of an odd duck. He was raised by a suffragette, not wolves. He鈥檚 not cute or plucky and he doesn鈥檛 sing a note. He has jug ears; a bad leg, thanks to polio; and an outsize vocabulary, thanks to his godmother Mattie.

He鈥檚 also entirely endearing in Lissa Evans鈥檚 novel, Crooked Heart, which gets my vote for the most purely charming read of the summer. As war descends on England, Noel becomes the mystery-reading mastermind of one of the least hardened con-artist duos since 鈥淧aper Moon.鈥� (One of Noel鈥檚 schemes also includes taking time to return an overdue Ellery Queen to the Kentish Town library.)

Let the record show that 鈥淐rooked Heart鈥� makes a solid case for a suffragette godmother over a fairy godmother. Mattie is wholly lovely 鈥� stalwart, eccentric, the kind of guardian every bookish child wishes would take him in. She鈥檚 full of brisk sayings, such as 鈥淗obbies are for people who don鈥檛 read books.鈥� But Mattie, who earned a Ph.D. at a time when most women didn鈥檛 go to college (her thesis was on Thomas Fuller and the origins of wit), is "losing words." 鈥淭he box of things for making flames/ I can鈥檛 recall their bloody names,鈥� she rhymes, joking in the face of senile dementia.

Noel takes over the cooking and puts helpful labels on everything, but it becomes clear that won鈥檛 be enough. 鈥淭hat was the first time he really felt afraid; soon, he began to carry the feeling around with him, a cold scarf wrapped around his neck, a stomach full of tadpoles.鈥�

This particular reader started turning pages of the prologue slower, unwilling to face what鈥檚 clearly coming. After the worst, Noel gets handed off to the stultifying home of his "Uncle" Geoffrey and "Aunt" Margery.

When the children are evacuated from London during the Blitz, Noel finds himself limping from house to house as all the other, more athletic or adorable boys and girls are taken in first. He ends up in the care of Vera Sedge, a 36-year-old widow who hasn鈥檛 so much fallen on hard times as sunk waist-deep in them. 鈥淸S]he seemed more like a pigeon, drab and directionless, pecking at anything that looked as if it might be edible.鈥�

Vee is the kind of woman whose bread always lands butter-side down: She takes out a life-insurance policy on a failing elderly neighbor (legal at the time), and the woman鈥檚 health suddenly improves.

While others are filtering government-dyed petroleum to sell to civilians, raiding homes during blackouts for jewelry and silver spoons, or doing a brisk business on the black market, Vee gives her grown son her egg and cheese ration and tries to keep her mother in ink and violet creams by doing piecework for a hatmaker.

Her mother spends her time writing letters to the prime minister. Meanwhile, Vee鈥檚 son, Donald, has turned a heart murmur into a lucrative business for people who would just as soon skip that whole draft thing. (While happy to eat his mom's egg and cheese, he doesn't feel the need to reciprocate by contributing to the rent.) It seems as if everyone is making more money off the war than Vera. (At one point, she assigns Noel an essay: 鈥淲ho Profits Most from the War? Nazis or Shopkeepers? Discuss.鈥�)

Mattie has taught Noel her disdain for authority, so he and Vee team up, going door to door to collect for widows and orphans. (It is, in a certain sense, accurate, if not ethical.)

As with all Vee鈥檚 schemes, complications ensue. And when Donald鈥檚 4-F business inevitably goes pear-shaped, the repercussions threaten to engulf his mother and Noel, unless they can come up with a new plan.

鈥� 鈥業t鈥檚 not鈥︹�� she picked a careful path through the words. 鈥業t鈥檚 not the sort of plan that you鈥檇 want to end up explaining in court.鈥� 鈥�

鈥淵ou mean it鈥檚 legally wrong but morally right?鈥� Noel asks her eagerly.

The novel鈥檚 heart may be crooked, but it is completely in the right place. And if wanting a happy ending for this offbeat pair is wrong, I can鈥檛 imagine a reader on earth who would want to be right.