Sweet & Crazy

I loved the movie Mermaids (with Cher, Winona Ryder, etc.) so I was delighted to read the novel on which it is based as well as Patty Dann's new novel, Sweet and Crazy. Both are wonderful because the author has a huge heart, an uncanny ear for dialogue, and a sharp eye for poignant and funny details. Sweet and Crazy shows a newly-widowed mother with her young son and handsome neighbor in a way that makes us look at and appreciate anew the people who matter to us most.

Reading this book helped me think of my losses through the child's eyes. The writer did an excellent job about capturing the honest sweet words of the 4years old child reacting to the loss of his father. It also captured the widow's feeling about the new challenges in her life, the loss of a loving husband, her 4 years old child and the new romance. The story is capturing, in a very sweet and crazy way

Patty Dann has created a delicate miniature of a book; small, yet it covers monumental events, both in the narrator's personal life as well as in the topsy turvy world around her. Hanna, grief-stricken at losing her young husband to cancer and the stark reality that she must bring up her four year old son alone, is forced with little warning, into unknown territory. Now a "window," as Pete, her zesty little son puts it, in his unerringly honest way, adjusting is often painful but also contains some sweet surprises. Hanna's gradual acceptance of her forever altered life, with the gracious help of an unusual neighbor, makes for a satisfying, sweet and slightly crazy tale. It is a highly enjoyable book.

perfect, soft, real, gentle, very sad, very funny - beuatifully written. A+++++

Sweet & Crazy is very funny and poignant at the same time. I was immediately drawn in by the narrator, Hanna Painter and her life as a young widow with her zany son. I especially enjoyed her relationship with her neighbor Thomas and the eccentric masseuse, Joya and how she deals with the challenges of raising a child on her own all against the backdrop of 9/11 in a small town in Ohio. Dann is the author of MERMAIDS, which was made into a movie with Cher and Winona Ryder and this will make a great movie too. It was a joy to read.