Margins
We Want What We Want book cover
We Want What We Want
2021
First Published
3.96
Average Rating
255
Number of Pages

A collection of glittering, surprising, darkly funny stories of people testing the boundaries of their lives, from the celebrated author of Dual Citizens. In the mordantly funny Money, Geography, Youth, Vanessa arrives home from a gap year volunteering in Ghana to find that her father is engaged to her childhood best friend. Unable to reconcile the girl she went to dances with in the eighth grade and the woman in her father's bed, Vanessa turns to a different old friendship for her own, unique diversion. In the subversive The Brooks Brothers Guru, Amanda drives to upstate New York to rescue her gawky cousin from a cult, only to discover clean-cut, well-dressed men living in a beautiful home, discussing the classics, and drinking sophisticated cocktails, moving her to wonder what freedoms she might willingly trade away for a life of such elegant comfort. And in The Universal Particular, Tamar welcomes her husband's young stepcousin into their home, imagining they are saving this young woman from Somalia by way of Stockholm, only to find their cool suburban life of potlucks and air-conditioning knocked askew in ways they cannot quite understand. Populated with imperfect families, burned potential, and inescapable old flames, the thirteen stories in We Want What We Want are, each one, diamond-sharp—sparkling with pain, humor, and beauty.

Avg Rating
3.96
Number of Ratings
916
5 STARS
30%
4 STARS
44%
3 STARS
21%
2 STARS
4%
1 STARS
2%
goodreads

Author

Alix Ohlin
Alix Ohlin
Author · 8 books
Alix Ohlin is the author of The Missing Person, a novel; Babylon and Other Stories; and Signs and Wonders, a story collection. Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Best New American Voices, and on public radio’s Selected Shorts. She lives in Vancouver, BC.
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