"All that talking, years of reading: There was a time I thought that all language might contain something of value, but most of life is flat and boring and the things we say are too. Or maybe it's that most of life is so much stranger than language is able to make room for, so we say the same dead things and hope maybe the who and how of what is said can make it into what we mean."

Lynn Steger Strong's latest novel, WANT, opens in 2000 with a doting memory of our heroine, Elizabeth, at age 16, and how she's tethered her love to her dear friend, Sasha, a year ahead of her. Like all beautiful people, Sasha is alluring, magnetic, an unfailing reminder of the innumerable ways Elizabeth places second to her. Seventeen years later: Elizabeth is 34, struggling to uphold her family of four as the brood's breadwinner, and barely making ends meet as an adjunct professor at underprivileged schools following the misadventures of her self-employed husband and the demands of their young daughters. She has, in so many ways, been broken by the trajectory of her life. She is not alone.

While finding transient joy in being a confidant to her students, doing morning runs, and leaving work unannounced to read books in cafes at the limited leisure of her “magic credit card,” she scrolls through the wasteland of social media feeds to find Sasha — married and approaching motherhood again — with whom she yearns to reconcile after her descent to drugs and miscarriage years ago. Burned by the backhanded affection of her parents, whose abuse lingers long after she escapes Florida for an unaffordable life in New York, Elizabeth, like so many other women, must grapple with wanting so much from a world that does not always want her. Who must keep her hands on the steering wheel at all times, and must pull herself together at all times even when it seems the very fabric of her life continues to unravel around her.

With WANT, Strong pens an exhilarating evocation of the ways women overcome the hurdles of motherhood, the distress of being undesired, and the painful severance of once-beloved friendships.

A novel of survival the struggles of. Motherhood.A novel of marriage of financial struggles of life struggles.Well written characters that come alive. #netgalley #henryholt

Disjointed story of a woman and her husbands experience declaring bankruptcy . A lot of complaining about her job as a teacher and her husband lack of employment. In her spare time, she cyberstalks her former best friend who she imagined is doing very well , according to the friends social media. She debates actually contacting the frien, and their real life interactions are disappointing. I never got a feeling for any of the books characters.