Objects of Desire

A Best Book of the Summer in The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly,Vogue, Esquire and Refinery29

‘Sestanovich’s elegant prose takes seriously the quiet unrest that can ravage a life’ - Raven Leilani, author of Luster ‘A debut story collection of the rarest kind … you wish that every single entry could be an entire novel.’ - Entertainment Weekly

A university student is flying home to visit her family when she strikes up an odd, ephemeral friendship with the couple next to her on the plane. A mother prepares for her son’s wedding, her own life unravelling as his comes together. A long-lost stepbrother’s visit prompts a family’s reckoning with its old taboos.

In these eleven powerful stories, thrilling desire and melancholic yearning animate women’s lives - from the brink of adulthood, to the labyrinthine path between twenty and thirty, to middle age, when certain possibilities quietly lapse. Tender, lucid and piercingly funny, Objects of Desire is a collection pulsing with subtle drama, rich with unforgettable scenes, and alive with moments of recognition, each more startling than the last - a spellbinding debut that announces a major talent.

Clare Sestanovich named one of The National Book Foundation’s ‘5 under 35’.