Wanting
A Novel
by Claire Jia
You must sign in to see if this title is available for request. Sign In or Register Now
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Jul 01 2025 | Archive Date Jun 30 2025
Tin House | Tin House Books
Talking about this book? Use #Wanting #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
As the two women rekindle their friendship, Wenyu reveals a shocking secret about a past love that pushes Lian to question her own relationship. A few neighborhoods away, aging architect Song Chen is forced to confront his own past and the dissolution of his marriage as he’s tasked with building Wenyu’s dream home. And when the dark side of Wenyu’s enviable life emerges and threatens everything Lian and Wenyu have built for themselves, they must make a choice between the stable known and the frightening unknown that may have devastating and unexpected consequences.
In girlhood memories and karaoke afternoons in Xidan Square, in aspirational YouTube channels and billboard ads, in private hotel rendezvous and secret WeChat messages, Claire Jia’s debut novel is a love letter to friendship; a powder keg of impossible, interwoven desires; a siren song that explores why, even as it destroys us, we always want more.
Advance Praise
"Wanting vividly traces the arc of adolescent friendship and love into adult hunger and hope. Whether for a wealthy immigrant YouTuber or the lonely strivers of the world she leaves behind, Claire Jia’s attention to her characters is at once compassionate and unflinching. This is a dazzling portrait of both modern China and the unrelenting ambitions of the human heart." -Belinda Huijuan Tang, author of A Map for the Missing
"Written with emotional precision and tremendous wisdom, Wanting depicts the subtle and often inexplicable ways that friendship and romantic love evolve over time. Compassionate, perceptive and totally absorbing—I loved this novel." -Hanna Halperin, author of I Could Live Here Forever
"Claire Jia’s novel brings us right into the fray of the complicated, human dramas of Beijing’s urbane elite. She delightfully illuminates both the quotidian and surreal details of our multicultural, interconnected worlds and of the unexpected connections between the U.S. and China, between old friends and old grievances. Her novel is a thoughtful and thought-provoking exploration." -Emily Feng, author of Let Only Red Flowers Bloom
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781963108279 |
| PRICE | $18.99 (USD) |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Kristin S, Reviewer
This was a fantastic debut novel. It is a multiple POV story of people wanting to survive, wanting to succeed, wanting the road not chosen, and the affect of each character's decisions on the others.The characters all feel very real; not perfect and not unlikeable, but deserving of empathy as they live their lives and make decisions based on the circumstances they find themselves in, even while these decisions have disastrous consequences at times. At the end, there is an open question of what success really means, and what is it that we really should be striving for with our lives? Jia's prose is absorbing, and I strongly recommend. Special thanks to Tin House for the ARC.
Faith P, Reviewer
Thank you so much to NetGalley, Tin House, and to the brilliant author, Claire Jia, for the eARC of this intensely captivating and complex novel :)
Claire Jia’s debut novel Wanting is a riveting exploration of close female friendship and the emotions that accompany it: passion, jealousy, obsession, rebellion. It is a story of the possibilities that can unfold when two best friends forge a world of their own, a world in which they make the rules and they are each other’s “perfect accomplices,” as the main character Lian says of her and her best friend, Wenyu. When the two childhood best friends are reunited after a decade, they rekindle their fierce, uninhibited bond, allowing all of their hidden desires to run wild - knowingly, they risk the destruction of the seemingly perfect lives they have each built for a chance to satisfy their unrelenting wanting.
Wanting is also so much more than a tale of friendship and desire. It is a nuanced portrayal of class tensions and the widespread, devastating effects of capitalism in both China and America. It is a critique of the inaccessible and deceitful “American dream.” And it is a reflection on the complexities and limitations of language: the meanings lost in translation, the contexts in which we speak one language versus another, the statements that we can say comfortably in a foreign language but may never dare say in our native tongue (e.g. “I love you” vs “wo ai ni”).
I am going to be thinking about this novel for a long time. I could honestly write a whole essay about it. Can’t wait to read more from Claire Jia!
Readers who liked this book also liked:
Rabih Alameddine
General Fiction (Adult), LGBTQIAP+, Literary Fiction
