... that I haven't done my morning sketch today. Yeah, blame it on a book. It's so agonising; I don't have time to read it in one stretch, but I'm half way through, and all worried about the characters and wondering what will happen next, and it's all I can think about while I'm at work. Argh.
There's this kid Eliza Naumann, and everyone at school thinks she's really mediocre at everything, but she wins the school spelling competition and suddenly her hippie rabbi dad sees all sorts of meaning in it and gets way overexcited about her potential, neglecting her studious big brother and her strange mother. (Shades of Chaim Potok's book The Chosen, I think.) Right now she's in the national competition and I think she's going to win and her dad's going to blow his top or something. And maybe her mother's going to get arrested and possibly her brother's going to join a cult, I don't know yet. ...And it's KILLING me.
This would be Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. (I had tea with Myla and Ellen last week, that's what got me on to reading it.) I can't vouch for the ending, but don't tell me or I'll send someone around to beat you up.