Each September, Frances invites several friends to gather at her cliffside home in the farthest reaches of the English countryside. Leaving their lives at the gate, this cast of artists, writers and musicians indulges in candlelit dinners and conspicuous love affairs. Among them is Ava, twenty-one years old, naïve, and hungry. Christopher is a brilliant pianist-married, older, and magnetic; he and Ava embark on a passionate and troubled liaison. The next year Christopher is absent, and Alasdair is there in his place. In the third year, the trio is forced together, along with Christopher's wife and children: eating, drinking, and suffering through the consequences of their ferocious appetites.
An essential debut brimming with indulgent feasts and crystalline dialogue from one of the most exciting new voices in British fiction, Wanting is an extraordinary tale of innocence and experience, beauty and decadence, and the profound ways desire transforms us.