Named a Best Book of 2020 by Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times,
NPR, Vulture, The New Yorker, and Kirkus
Grappling with motherhood, economic anxiety, rage, and the limits of
language, Want is a fiercely personal novel that vibrates with
anger, insight, and love.
Elizabeth is tired. Years after coming to New York to try to build a
life, she has found herself with two kids, a husband, two jobs, a
PhD--and now they're filing for bankruptcy. As she tries to balance her
dream and the impossibility of striving toward it while her work and
home lives feel poised to fall apart, she wakes at ungodly hours to run
miles by the icy river, struggling to quiet her thoughts.
When she reaches out to Sasha, her long-lost childhood friend, it feels
almost harmless--one of those innocuous ruptures that exist online, in
texts. But her timing is uncanny. Sasha is facing a crisis, too, and
perhaps after years apart, their shared moments of crux can bring them
back into each other's lives.
In Want, Lynn Steger Strong explores the subtle violences enacted on a
certain type of woman when she dares to want things--and all the various
violences in which she implicates herself as she tries to survive.
