From his tone she guesses this is a joke, though she has no idea why. She could ask, but doesn’t. He leans back against the counter, crossing his feet. “Schopenhauer knew that human desire caused pain and difficulty in the world, but our will is intractable. We want what we want. So what do we do about this? How do we find relief?” He pours them each another shot. “The only sublimation is through the aesthetic. Through the appreciation of art.” ~ The Brooks Brothers Guru
The thirteen short stories in We Want What We Want seem to primarily examine this idea of thwarted desire as being the source of pain in the world. Each story contrasts people in opposite situations — married vs single, money vs none, settled vs free — and while many of the characters don’t seem to be entirely happy in their own lives, they don’t necessarily envy the people who made different choices; it’s not the circumstances here but the craving for some outer unknown that upends us. With some darkly funny scenes and some scenes that startle with their relatable humanity, Alix Ohlin has crafted a strong collection here; a little samey-same when read all together, nothing that totally mesmerised me, but a solid read with many well-observed moments nonetheless. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Brief synopsis and key quote from each story:
The Point of No Return
The story of a long term female friendship: from casual besties to infrequent correspondents, to something both less and more.
Sometimes she saw her life as a tender thing that was separate from herself, a tiny animal she had happened upon by chance one day and decided to raise. It was terrifying to think how small it was, how wild, how easily she could fit it in the palm of her hand.
Casino
Two middle-aged sisters, nearing the breaking point of a brief visit, join forces when they happen upon the meth-snorting drug dealer who had run away with the daughter of one of them.
If you could have seen her as a little girl, my Rosie, then you would know what happiness looks like. She laughed all the time. Her bed was piled so high with stuffed animals you couldn’t even see the blankets, but Rose insisted on taking each of the animals into bed with her, so none of them would be lonely. I still don’t know how she went from that little girl to the skinny teenager who skipped school and spiked her hair and pierced her tongue and lower lip and who just laughed at me when I told her the truth — “ You’re going nowhere, Rose ” — and who grabbed my wrist and twisted it until my tears came and said, “You’re nowhere, Mom, you’re the definition of it,” and who marched out of the house as she had a hundred times before during that long bad year, only instead of coming back at three in the morning, or the next day, she never came back at all.
The Universal Particular
The cracks in one couple’s marriage are exposed when the husband invites a distant relative to spend the summer with them.
Tamar watched Albert quiz Aziza about the creepy neighbor, what he’d said and done, while the girl grew first flustered, then sullen. Albert never knows when he’s gone too far, doesn’t understand that he’s acting less like a protective patriarch than his own brand of creep.
Risk Management
An older woman accepts a dinner invitation from a young colleague and learns more (and especially more about herself) than she had counted on.
We’d never socialized outside of work. In fact I didn’t socialize with anyone from work, even Margaret, who was close to my age and lived in my neighborhood and whose cats I took care of when she went to visit her aunt in Nanaimo for two weeks every July. I liked everyone fine, but forty hours a week is already a lot of time to spend with people who’ve entered your life by happenstance.
Money, Geography, Youth
What would you do if you came back from a gap year of volunteering in Ghana and discovered your father was engaged to your best friend?
The explanations tumbled out of her father and her friend, each of them completing each other’s sentences, her father’s large hands slapping the table every so often gently, keen to touch Kelsey’s shoulder or hand but holding back, for Vanessa’s sake, she could tell. Kelsey had started out working as an intern, become a trusted advisor, and somewhere along the way graduated to girlfriend. They’d kept the relationship secret, because they wanted to tell Vanessa first, and doing it long distance didn’t feel right. But now they were happy, happiness spilled from them, sloshed like liquid from a drunk person’s glass.
The Woman I Knew
Imagine finding out that your college roommate/BFFL is the biological daughter of your favourite author, and that she never mentioned the fact.
Of course I’d told Iris how much the book had meant to me. In all our time together, there was nothing of myself — my earnestness, my confusion, my desire to have a different life than my parents’, without any idea of what that might look like, or who I might have to be to inhabit it — that I had held back from her. I may even have talked about it while we were in bed together. It was impossible to me that she could have withheld this information.
Something About Love
A recent widower starts a relationship with a divorced woman and, somehow, becomes close friends with her ex.
Lewis had worried that Vicky wouldn’t approve, but she only waved her hand and said, “Go with God.” The children loved that he was friends with Stan. They called Wednesdays “Dads Night.” “The dads are going out!” they said. Otherwise they called him Lewis, not dad, and hearing this made Lewis feel warm, a warmth that was part shame, because it did not yet seem deserved.
FMK
A woman reflects on her life when her current and former girlfriends cross paths at a funeral.
In my memory all of her was gleaming. She tried to take the dart from me and I wouldn’t give it until she told me her name. When I let go, my palm was pricked with blood. We live together now in Cat’s condo with a dachshund named Murray who has hip dysplasia and a terrible personality and whose presence in our lives is my greatest regret. I know I’m lucky to have such a manageable regret. I’m lucky in a lot of ways.
The Brooks Brothers Guru
A young woman goes on a road trip to check on a cousin who has joined some kind of academy — or is it a cult? Either way, it may be what’s lacking in her own life.
The strain of her two desires — to seek the connection and to reject it — paralyzes her, and she lies rigid, every muscle tensed. If she were to speak, she would dissolve, or break in half.
The Detectives
An accident redefines two sisters’ relationship.
I knew Bobby’s. It was a sad diner out on the highway where Nicole and I used to go when we were teenagers. We’d eat pie and flirt with middleaged men and then leave suddenly, knowing they’d settle the bill. We thought we were so dangerous. We thought being girls was such a game.
Service Intelligence
This one ends with a gut punch: A young college dropout comes to understand her neighbour when they connect over suppressed rage.
Once Karen asked me about my friends, and I said I had lots but not many I liked, and she asked how I could have friends I didn’t really like and I said, “I’m sorry, have you ever been around girls?” and she laughed in a tone that made us both feel sad.
Taxonomy
You can’t be damaged by the family (or the species, class, or phylum) you don’t know.
He prayed that Phoebe would never come back, never try to take the baby from him, that life in their apartment had been so hellish she wouldn’t want a single reminder of it, even one composed of her own flesh and blood. To his endless surprise and gratitude, these prayers had been answered.
Nights Back Then
Circling back to Schopenhauer and the title quote, perhaps the pain of thwarted desire can only be relieved through art.
The person I was really looking for, of course, was Dmitri — because who else would share my memory, who else would understand? If he’d been in the room I would have rushed into his arms and begged him to forgive me for having driven him away. But he wasn’t. I had to keep to myself the strangeness of seeing those paintings, so thick and dense with luster, reminding me how little and how much can last.
