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Review - Objects of Desire by Clare Sestanovich

  • Writer: Little Literary Moments
    Little Literary Moments
  • Jul 7, 2024
  • 3 min read

Author: Clare Sestanovich


Rating: 4 stars / 5 stars


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Favorite Quote: “All her stories were about her friend the. The hockey player, the speechwriter, the glass blower. (I wondered sometimes how I appeared in these stories, or whether I did, since I wasn’t the anything. I had a nonspecific job, a vague creative ambition, a family that sounded interesting only if I told the right anecdotes.)” Sestanovich, Clare. Objects of Desire. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. E-book ed.


Review: Thank you to the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf,  and the NetGalley platform for the free e-ARC that I received in exchange for an honest review.


If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that short stories are hit or miss for me. I think the form can be life changing when done correctly, but I have a hard time finding it done correctly. Sestanvich does. Her stories, though not linked by characters or circumstances, or really anything but a vague theme, still manages to create a cohesive piece of works that each can exist on their own as a whole universe, as whole moments in time, and with fully formed characters who form, shatter, and sometimes reform on the page. 


Ostensibly, this is a collection about romantic/sexual desire, thus the most obvious meaning of the title. There is a woman who is nostalgic for a past, college relationship, a woman whose affair torpedoed her successful career, the woman who is “the other woman” but who is known and generally accepted by “the wife,” among many others. Each of these stories follow the main character in their (oftentimes) doomed romances. And yet, and yet - 


And yet, more than a search for others - for romantic partners, for sexual experiences, for stability - these stories often center a search for the self. The quote above embodies that, but so do many others sprinkled throughout. For example:

  • “She wonders why there isn’t a word for the anticipation of nostalgia.”

  • “When they say goodbye, what they say is congratulations.”

  • “She went back to being thin-thighed and small-eared, the kind of girl Suzanne might once have hated or might once have been, she couldn’t remember which.”

  • “I told him - I didn’t look at you - that I didn’t want to be loved in spite of: my mood swings and my neck pain, my secret arrogance and my secret laziness, my bad dental hygiene and my leftovers molding at the back of the fridge.”

  • “[S]he didn’t worry that I would die or be destroyed. She worried that I would crumple in the face of everyday failures, that I would gradually deflate - a quiet, unremarkable hissing - into a case of unfulfilled potential.” 

  • “As is true of life, but not movies: I didn’t know it was the last time.”

  • “She is fragile, these days, when met with her own false expectations.”

  • “I said the things I Had heard my classmates say - school was boring, school was pointless - even though what I really meant was that school was unkind.”


If Sestanovhich’s goal was to create a world in which characters struggle to find themselves while also struggling to exist in the world around them - relationships, jobs, family, etc. - she has done so on every page.


The only aspect of this book that I think could make it better (and the thing I often say about short story collections) is that I feel like there could have been a bit more


About that Quote: This quote really just summarizes a key component of this book - people existing but not quite sure what is to come from their existence.


Have you read Objects of Desire? Share your thoughts below!






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