Calf

Part Are You There God It''s Me Margaret and part Taxi Driver this creepy unsettling and absolutely addictive novel is at once a penetrating character study a meditation on the zeitgeist of the ''80s and an unflinching depiction of violence both intimate and sensational.. The year was 1981. The US was entering a deep recession Russia was our enemy and John Hinckley Jr.''s assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan shocked the nation. It was also the year author Andrea Kleine learned her close childhood friend had been violently murdered by her socialite mother Leslie DeVeau. Both events took place in Washington DC. Hinckley and DeVeau were both sent to St. Elizabeth''s hospital guilty by reason of insanity. It was there that they met and later became lovers.. These two real-life and ultimately converging events inspired Kleine''s jaw-dropping spine-tingling novel CALF. Made up of dual narratives and told over the course of one year Kleine''s account follows a fictionalized John Hinckley Jr. as he stalks a young actress in the lead-up to the assassination attempt and eleven-year-old Tammy whose friend is murdered in her sleep.