Want Not - by Jonathan Miles (Paperback)

About the Book

From the author of Dear American Airlines, a highly inventive and corrosively funny story of our times.

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book, Want Not offers funny and occasionally devastating "portraits of humanity...as beautifully mundane and unique as a fingerprint." (Entertainment Weekly)

"Wonderful...the work of a fluid, confident and profoundly talented writer." --Dave Eggers

A highly inventive and corrosively funny story of our times, Want Not exposes three different worlds in various states of disrepair--a young freegan couple living off the grid in New York City; a once-prominent linguist, sacked at midlife by the dissolution of his marriage and his father's losing battle with Alzheimer's; and a self-made debt-collecting magnate, whose brute talent for squeezing money out of unlikely places has yielded him a royal existence, trophy wife included. Want and desire propel these characters forward toward something, anything, more, until their worlds collide, briefly, randomly, yet irrevocably, in a shattering ending that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.

From the Back Cover

A New York Times Notable Book
A wonderful book, and there s no one I would not urge to read it . . . This is the work of a fluid, confident and profoundly talented writer who gets more fluid, more confident and seemingly more talented even within the book itself. Dave Eggers, New York Times Book Review
A highly inventive and corrosively funny story of our times, Want Not exposes three different worlds in various states of disrepair a young freegan couple living off the grid in New York City; a once-prominent linguist, sacked at midlife by the dissolution of his marriage and his father s losing battle with Alzheimer s; and a self-made debt-collecting magnate, whose brute talent for squeezing money out of unlikely places has yielded him a royal existence, trophy wife included.
Want and desire propel these characters forward toward something, anything, more, until their worlds collide, briefly, randomly, yet irrevocably, in a shattering ending that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.
Shrewd, funny, and sometimes devastating . . . What Want Not does best, though, isn t plotting but portraits of humanity: the small epiphanies and private hurts of every person whose life, like the detritus they produce, is as beautifully mundane and unique as a fingerprint. Entertainment Weekly
An impassioned work of fiction. Dallas Morning News
[author photo] Jonathan Miles is a former columnist for the New York Times and a contributing editor to magazines as diverse as Field & Stream and Details. He writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review and Literary Review (UK). A former longtime resident of Oxford, Mississippi, he currently lives with his family in rural New Jersey.

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Review Quotes

"I loved this book...Jonathan Miles can write, and here he's written a wonderful book, and there's no one I would not urge to read it....This is the work of a fluid, confident and profoundly talented writer who gets more fluid, more confident and seemingly more talented even within the book itself. As it progresses, 'Want Not' so assuredly accumulates power and profundity and momentum that I read the last 200 pages without pause." - Dave Eggers, New York Times Book Review "[a] shrewd, funny, and sometimes devastating new novel....What WANT NOT does best, though, isn't plotting but portraits of humanity: the small epiphanies and private hurts of every person whose life, like the detritus they produce, is as beautifully mundane and unique as a fingerprint. A-" - Entertainment Weekly "Panoramic...For readers who relish extravagant language, scathing wit and philosophical heft, Want Not wastes nothing." - Kirkus, STARRED "With forthright wit and stunning intimacy, Miles doesn't hesitate to broach the uncomfortable consequences of unchecked abundance and desire. The result is a wild tangle of high-octane, entertaining prose, an astonishing leap for this accomplished novelist." - Booklist "Before you gird your loins and stuff your birds for Thanksgiving, spend some highly rewarding hours with all the trash and waste in Jonathan Miles's new novel, WANT NOT." - Bloomberg "outrageously funny" - Ron Charles, WashingtonPost.com "Whether you're a chronic hoarder or a censorious neatnik, make room on the shelf for this terrific new book from Jonathan Miles called "Want Not." Best known for his first comic novel, "Dear American Airlines," Miles is back with a complex, often hilarious, ultimately moving story about who we are and what we discard -- subjects that have always been more intimately linked than we care to admit. "Want Not" is -- someone's got to say it -- the best trashy novel of the year....Even as "Want Not" paws through the bones of pre¬history, the wasteland of our modern economy and the ashes of the future, Miles's elegant and thoughtful voice suggests that all is not lost. The novel may begin with prickly satire, it may dig deep into America's disposable lifestyle, but it ultimately pivots to scenes of surprising tenderness. Despite our extravagant waste, despite our carelessness with each other, despite that temptation to despair that everything is flotsam and jetsam, Miles offers a heartfelt affirmation of human value. That's what makes this a novel to hoard." - Washington Post "What is extremely apparent...is Jonathan Miles' extraordinary talent. Where so many writers are impressionists, Miles is more of a photo realist....Miles presents such fully developed characters, you come to know their essences." - New Jersey Star Ledger "When prompted to offer up a pithy description of life on Planet Earth for future generations, one might be tempted to filch a line from a character in Jonathan Miles'second novel: 'We came, we saw, we trashed.' With a title like WANT NOT you'd think its author, if not the book's characters, might agree. But what makes Miles' new book (after the much lauded DEAR AMERICAN AIRLINES so luminous and so resonant is what it asks instead: Or did we?" - The Oregonian "WANT NOT, the sophomore effort of Jonathan Miles, author of the much-praised comic rant of a novel DEAR AMERICAN AIRLINES, does not disappoint. WANT NOT leaps nimbly from topic to topic, each sentence providing a --

About the Author

JONATHAN MILES's first novel, Dear American Airlines, was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal. He writes regularly for the New York Times Book Review.