Every September, a select few artists, writers and musicians are invited to a country house on the far edge of the English coast. Built into the cliff face with views of the vast Atlantic, it offers inspiration – but also escape. Each night, at the dining room’s long, laden table, the world outside is forgotten, and ambition and appetite begins to blur.
Ava, young and beautiful, comes because she always has – her father once belonged here, and she has nothing better to do. Christopher, married, middle-aged and wildly charismatic, comes to play the piano. Alasdair, less notable but no less gifted a musician, is his oldest friend. In the warmth of candlelight and expensive alcohol, the evenings the two men spend with Ava stir regret, ignite obsession, and threaten to unmake the lives they thought they had built.
An essential debut from one of the most exciting new voices in British fiction, Wanting is an extraordinary tale of innocence and experience, of beauty and decadence, and of the profound ways desire transforms us.
