Every Kind of Wanting Complicated and Still, Always, Worth Living
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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR U.S. $26.00 “Gina Frangello masterfully captures the craziness of everyday life: messy and EVERY KIND OF WANTING complicated and still, always, worth living. “Who really owns a baby—or another person’s heart? Is it the community of people who EV Every Kind of Wanting is a wonder.” love and want a child? The woman whose eggs are responsible? Or the surrogate who —Marcy dermansky, E carries the fetus? Frangello’s funny and deeply moving novel is so fearless and ambitious, Every Kind of Wanting explores the complex author of The Red Car and Bad Marie KIND OF WANTING RY the pages practically ignite.” —caroline leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of EVERY Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You intersection of three unique families and their bustling efforts to have a “Community Baby.” “Desire is at the heart of Frangello’s work, and whether we can survive it is central to this raw, wonderful, and unmistakably contemporary novel. This is the future that our conser- Raised in poverty, Miguel could not be more vative forebears were scared of, in all its messy, hopeful glory.” different from his partner Chad, a happy- —J. ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest A NOVEL go-lucky real estate mogul from Chicago’s “This is a novel about how we matter to each other, and why, and to what end. It is a lab- yrinthine story, complex, recursive, and crafted around the unflinchingly intimate honestly wealthy North Shore. When Chad’s sister that marks everything Gina Frangello writes. What a brutal book. What a beautiful book.” Gretchen offers the couple an egg, their —Jill alexander Essbaum, New York Times bestselling author of Hausfrau search for a surrogate leads them to Miguel’s “Gina Frangello’s gifts are countless, but chief among them might be her mining of our old friend Emily, married to an eccentric Irish deepest needs, our greatest desires and fears. Every Kind of Wanting is a tour de force, and Gina Frangello is a genius. Read this to discover her, but better yet: read it to discover playwright, Nick, with whom she is raising two your own heart.” —rebecca Makkai, author of The Hundred Year House KIND OF boys. Into this web falls Miguel’s sister Lina, “Gina Frangello’s Every Kind of Wanting left me breathless in the best way . like bodies a former addict and stripper, who begins a GINA FRANGELLO is the author love-wrestling, like language’s sweet sweat and suction. I’d follow her words anywhere.” passionate affair with Nick while deciphering of the Target Emerging Authors selection A —lidia yuknavitch, author of The Small Backs of Children the mysteries of her family’s past. Life in Men, which was a book club selection “In Every Kind of Wanting, Gina Frangello unspools an exquisitely layered story about G desire that takes us to astonishing heights and necessary depths. In a novel that is INA But every action these couples make has for NYLON magazine, The Rumpus, and The sensual, shocking, and wise, she delivers truth after truth about lust—whether for a G INA F RANGE LLO unforeseen consequences. As Lina faces her Nervous Breakdown. She is also the author lover, for a baby, for (in)fidelity, for hidden meaning, or, as she so powerfully redefines it, for love.” —dylan landis, author of Rainey Royal F long-hidden demons, and the fragile friend- of two other books of fiction: Slut Lullabies, RANG ships between Miguel and Chad and Nick and a Foreword Magazine Best Book of the Year “No one, NO ONE, captures the urgency and heartbreak of the contemporary family, in all its complexity, better than Gina Frangello. Every Kind of Wanting is the literary equivalent Emily begin to fray as the baby’s birth draws finalist, andMy Sister’s Continent. Her short of a hand grenade. I loved it.” —Joanna rakoff, author of My Salinger Year E near, a shocking turn of events—and the fiction, essays, book reviews, and journal- LLO “ is not only a study in great character development, it is a consum- Every Kind of Wanting secret Lina’s been hiding—threaten to break ism have been published in Ploughshares, mate, emotionally sophisticated, and fiercely readable survey of the yearnings that shape our lives. Frangello is a writer’s writer, and Every Kind of Wanting finds her at the top of them apart forever. the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the her game.” —Jonathan Evison, author of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving Timely, urgent, and deeply moving, Every Huffington Post, Fence, FiveChapters, Prairie WANTING Kind of Wanting strips bare the layers of the Schooner, the Chicago Reader, and many modern search for community. Tackling issues others. Learn more at www.ginafrangello.com. ISBN: 978-1-61902-722-0 5 2 6 0 0 such as race, class, sexuality, and the chang- ing nature of family—those we are born with COUNTERPOINT and those we create—Frangello has created AUTHOR PHOTO: © BLAIR HOLMES www.counterpointpress.com JACKET DESIGN: JARROD TAYLOR her most provocative novel yet. Distributed by Publishers Group West 9 781619 027220 “Urgent and stirring.” —Laila Lalami, Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize EVERY KIND OF WANTING EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 1 7/7/16 12:45 PM EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 2 7/7/16 12:45 PM EVERY KIND OF WANTING A NOVEL GINA FRANGELLO COUNTERPOINT • BERKELEY EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 3 7/7/16 12:45 PM FOr ALICIA, gIVEr oF iMPROBABLe gIFTS, POrt in eVERy stORM, B FA. Copyright © 2016 by Gina Frangello All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embod- ied in critical articles and reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Frangello, Gina, author. Title: Every kind of wanting : a novel / Gina Frangello. Description: Berkeley : Counterpoint Press, [2016] Identifiers: LCCN 2016020227 | ISBN 9781619027220 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Married people—Fiction. | Conception—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. Classification: LCC PS3606.R3757 E94 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020227 Cover design by Jarrod Taylor Interior design by Domini Dragoone ISBN 978-1-61902-722-0 COUNTERPOINT 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318 Berkeley, CA 94710 www.counterpointpress.com Printed in the United States of America Distributed by Publishers Group West 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 4 7/7/16 12:45 PM ACT III PRIVATE BEASTS ACT I THE COMMUNITY BABY ACT II COMMUNISTS IN THE FUNHOUSE ACT IV STRONG’S LANDING EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 5 7/7/16 12:45 PM EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 6 7/7/16 12:45 PM ACT III P RIVATEV A T B EASTS VERY EARLY IN MY LIFE, IT WAS TOO LATE. —MARGUERITE DURAS EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 1 7/7/16 12:45 PM EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 2 7/7/16 12:45 PM L INA You think you know our story, Nick, but that would imply that I was capable of honesty. You think our stories are some joint thing, a common narrative on which we, the coconspirators, would agree, but you don’t know anything yet. One thing you taught me is that all empathy involves a kind of method acting. You used to say I was a natural actress, but with bipolar as rapid-cycling and tidal as mine, maybe inhabiting alter- nate states isn’t particularly foreign. Plenty of days, I can wake up in a hypomanic groove, cylinders firing with crystalline clarity all morn- ing, then crash into a blackhearted, apathetic depression by evening where my brain feels wrapped in gauze, and come 1:00 a.m., facing another manic, sleepless night, I’m ready to peel the paint from the walls, mentally ricocheting around like a fruit fly that can’t land, head blaring, trying to benzo myself into sleep or stupor and hoping the ride will be less wild tomorrow, unsure of who I’ll be. I love all the versions of you, you used to tell me, my pluralities for the first time not an embarrassing liability. But if characters are sup- posed to be consistent, I’m damned from the outset. Maybe I’ll have an easier time with the rest of you than I do with myself. I don’t know my brother’s husband’s sister well, but I’ve been around her, I don’t have to conjure her from scratch. You’ve met her 3 EKoW-3rdPgs.indd 3 7/7/16 12:45 PM EVERY KIND OF WANTING plenty of times, so that’s something, too. For our purposes here, let’s call her Gretchen. Did you ever visit her old house? I didn’t, but I bet we can both imagine it, in the shiny North Shore suburbs of Chicago. We both know what that kitchen looked like, right? Viking stove nobody ever cooked in: check. Gretchen’s marriage was unraveling just as all of this was beginning, so of everyone, perhaps she should have known better. But she loved her brother, Chad, who loved my brother, Miguel, who once upon a time knew Emily, before she was your wife.