The Wanting

Mixes conventional storytelling with magic realism...The Wanting contains strong descriptive writing and considerable cultural context...Lavigne knows how to evoke the volatile quest for meaning that affects so many in the Holy Land.

Lavigne's second novel confronts the moral questions surrounding religious extremism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...[His] heartfelt examination offers what reportage never could: an intensely intimate and humane depiction of the forces that unite and powerfully divide this region and its people.

The choice of a trio of narrators conveys the richness of this contemporary novel about the multilayered conflict between Israel and Palestine...Narrators Robert Fass, Cassandra Campbell, and Neil Shah hold their own when called upon. They convey the deep ambivalence that the characters feel about violence and the contradictions of their everyday experiences, in which violence plays a key role...The contemplation of the human experience at the core of the story is brought out by the cast, who use gentle, measured tones when delivering dialogue and ruminations.

Narrators Robert Fass, Cassandra Campell, and Neil Shah excellently portray the different characters and their riveting readings add enormously to the story.

In this exquisite novel of longing and loss, Lavigne has woven multiple stories of intersecting lives and conflicting desires. From the snowy streets of communist Moscow to the scorching heat of a Palestinian-controlled desert, we travel with characters at once ruined and resilient, some idealistic, others world-weary-all pursuing that most essential but elusive want: a place to call home. A beautiful meditation on love, and on all the ways in which stories are remembered and told.

Lavigne writes like an angel. And like a devil. Indeed, he writes so well that it isn't always possible to tell which is which. His ability to give wild imaginings a concrete immediacy, a human warmth and plausibility, is the rarest of writerly gifts.