With the exception of not being a Mom, the character of Elizabeth (who narrates this story) is dealing with many of the same things I, and many of us, are experiencing now: economic anxiety, unhappiness in their career and life goals, and the questioning of NYC as a viable place to live. WANT, the latest by the wonderful novelist Lynn Steger Strong, was one of those books.
There are some books that are a little too close to home, that hit you right in the feels when you least expect it and put you in a bad mood because you relate a little too closely, and they're a little too sad to fully enjoy. Many thanks to #NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for providing an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review. Kept hoping Sasha would fly in, in her underwear preferably, and steal Elizabeth away from her boring husband and her boring life. I liked the lost friendship storyline with Sasha best. The conversations are almost always one sided. The Chilean writer exists as the receptacle for this privileged, white woman's pain. The Chilean writer felt more like a foil for the narrator to further expound her woes on readers rather than an actual character. Oh god, and the "Chilean writer" who also doesn't warrant a name. My personal favorite of her no-name friends and colleagues is her "quadrilingual friend" who she mentions multiple times. Elizabeth condescendingly refers to her colleagues as "the twenty-three year old" or "the twenty-five year old." Her two Black colleagues are simply referred to as her two Black colleagues. To the narrator, most people don't have names but rather ages or nationalities.
Because we know that Elizabeth grew up in a rich family (I think she claims to have grown up middle class? In what world?), we know that none of the problems she thinks are real are going to go unresolved. As a result the points where I assume the author meant to land a gut punch for readers didn't land for me. I didn't care about the narrator Elizabeth or her family. The story seems to go nowhere and ultimately goes nowhere. I kept grasping for a hint of heart and soul but rarely found it. This may have been to convey the narrator's depression, but whew boy, reading this book felt like staring at a metronome for three hours. I kept hoping this would turn into a "lesbians reunited" love story with Sasha, but despite the narrator regularly describing Sasha in underwear, this never came to pass. I'm really tired of and not interested in reading books that showcase privileged-middle-class-NYC-straight/married-white women with rich parents perspectives. I feel like an asshole for not liking this book.
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