Every Kind of Wanting

"No one, NO ONE, captures the urgency and heartbreak of the contemporary family, in all its complexity, better than Gina Frangello." —Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year

Every Kind of Wanting explores the complex intersection of three unique families and their bustling efforts to have a "Community Baby." Miguel could not be more different from his partner Chad, a happy-go-lucky real estate mogul from Chicago’s wealthy North shore. When Chad’s sister Gretchen offers to donate an egg, their search for a surrogate leads them to Miguel’s old friend Emily, happily married to an eccentric Irish playwright, Nick, with whom she is raising two boys. Into this web falls Miguel’s sister Lina, a former addict and stripper, who begins a passionate affair with Nick while deciphering the mysteries of her past.

But every action these couples make has unforeseen circumstances, and as Lina faces her long-hidden demons, and the fragile friendships between Miguel and Chad and Nick and Emily begin to fray at the seams as the baby’s birth draws near, a shocking turn of events — and the secret Lina’s been hiding — will threaten to break them apart forever.

By turns funny, dark, and sexy, Every Kind of Wanting strips bare the layers of the American family today. Tackling issues such as assimilation, the legacy of secrets, the morality of desire, and ultimately who “owns” love, the characters — across all ethnicities, nationalities, and sexualities — are blisteringly alive.

"Gina Frangello’s Every Kind of Wanting left me breathless in the best way…like bodies love-wrestling, like language’s sweet sweat and suction. I’d follow her words anywhere." Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Small Backs of Children

"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 conservative forebears were scared of, in all its messy, hopeful glory." J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchen of the Great Midwest

"Each unhappy family is unhappy in it’s own way, but the families in Frangello’s latest novel are truly in a category all their own. Every Kind of Wanting maps the intersection of four Chicago couples as they fall into an impressively ambitious fertility scheme in the hopes of raising a "community baby." But first there are family secrets to reveal, abusive pasts to decipher, and dangerous decisions to make. If it sounds complicated, well, it is, but behind all the potential melodrama is a story that takes a serious look at race, class, sexuality, and loyalty — in short, at the new American family." The Millions’ Great Anticipated Book List of 2016

"Funny and also dark, with likable characters, Frangello’s novel is recommended for fans of witty fiction such as titles by Curtis Sittenfeld." Library Journal

"A twisted novel of family—the kinds we’re stuck with and the kinds we make—which poses big questions about love, fidelity, and parenthood… [T]his novel boldly attempts to address the intricacies of immigration, race, class, and sexuality that shape the contemporary American family… Fans of Frangello’s work will enjoy this intricate portrait of the connections between an immigrant Latino family and moneyed North Shore magnates." Kirkus Reviews

Gina Frangello is the author of the Target Emerging Authors selection A Life in Men, which was a book club selection for NYLON magazine, The Rumpus, and The Nervous Breakdown. She is also the author of two other books of fiction: Slut Lullabies, a Foreword Magazine Best Book of the Year finalist, and My Sister’s Continent. She is the founder of Other Voices Books, has served as the Sunday editor for The Rumpus, the fiction editor for The Nervous Breakdown, executive editor for Other Voices magazine, and the faculty editor for TriQuarterly Online.

One of the great characteristics of white privilege is the privilege of reinvention. White people can class jump, and nobody looks twice. You can go from having grown up below the poverty line, being routinely frisked against police cars and having your peers shot by rival gangs, to being a graduate student, an editor, a writer, a professor...

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