Want Lynn Steger Strong by Lynn Steger Strong 9781250247537, 1250247535 instant download after payment.

Grappling with motherhood, economic anxiety, rage, and the limits of language, Want is a fiercely personal novel that vibrates with anger, insight, and love.

“Moving… As a narrator, Elizabeth is smart and funny and literary to the marrow. The books she inhales for sustenance have turned out to be a great addition to my own pandemic pile. (Thank you, Ms Strong.)”  -  The New York Times

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.

"Want is so sharp about economic fragility and just how close to the edge people are - even with the seeming safeguard of middle-class jobs and good educations. The narrator's voice is the great draw here: It's tough, smart, semi-reliable, and low-level angry. We're mostly cooped up in her head throughout much of the novel, which is a fine and rich place to be."  -  Maureen Corrigan, NPR

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.