Every Kind of Wanting

July 18, 2016
The plot of Frangello’s (A Life in Men) latest sounds like it comes out of a feel-good Garry Marshall movie: Chad and Miguel, a wealthy gay couple in Chicago, set out to have a baby with the help of Chad’s sister, Gretchen, and Miguel’s old college friend Emily, in what Miguel’s unstable, bipolar sister, Lina, who narrates much of the novel, dubs the “Community Baby Plan.” But Frangello’s uneven, though sometimes illuminating novel has a darker story to tell, one about how this “tangled knot of people,” which also includes various spouses, siblings, and damaged children, gives way to “jealousy, entitlement, possession.” As the baby plan goes awry, in ways both comically minor and heartbreakingly major, spouses begin to cheat and most of those involved start to realize that they’re deluding themselves about their motivations. Frangello shifts the balance of the novel out of whack with her fond focus on Lina, whose most outwardly despicable acts Frangello forgives far more readily than those of the other characters. As Frangello twists the plot and adds unnecessary new strands, including the backstory of Lina and Miguel’s childhood in Colombia, what begins as a comedy of manners turns into an overly soapy melodrama.

July 1, 2016
A twisted novel of family--the kinds we're stuck with and the kinds we make--which poses big questions about love, fidelity, and parenthood.Told in the voices of four characters involved in an ambitious fertility scheme, Frangello's (A Life in Men, 2014, etc.) novel catalogs the interconnected lives and marriages of four Chicago couples. There's Lina, a former stripper contemplating leaving her longtime lover, Bebe--an academic "femi-nazi" and dom--for a wastrel playwright. Her brother, Miguel, is haunted by their abusive childhood in Caracas and afraid of failing at fatherhood despite the support of his well-to-do husband, Chad. Before long, the Guerra siblings become drawn into the world of white privilege exemplified by Chad's WASPy, upper-crust family, including his vulnerable sister, Gretchen. When Gretchen agrees to donate her eggs to Chad and Miguel so they can raise a longed-for baby, she unwittingly sets off a chain of events that will detonate crisis after family crisis. Poor Gretchen is gaslit by her grasping and abusive husband, Troy, all the while distrusting the intentions of Chad and Miguel's surrogate, Emily, a high school friend of Miguel's whose home life is crumbling around her. As the characters reveal where their true loyalties lie--with their spouses or lovers, the families they have or the ones they long for--Frangello's novel begins to fray at the seams of her ambitious plot. With a surfeit of melodrama, it can be hard to discern where the emotional center of Frangello's narratives lies. The complicated viper's nest of the "community baby" receives the bulk of her attention, while glimpses into the Guerras' painful family secrets offer the possibility of greater depth. Still, this novel boldly attempts to address the intricacies of immigration, race, class, and sexuality that shape the contemporary American family--even if the plot raises more questions than it answers. Fans of Frangello's work will enjoy this intricate portrait of the connections between an immigrant Latino family and moneyed North Shore magnates.

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September 1, 2016

Frangello (A Life in Men) shows readers how complicated it can get when one wants a baby. Chad and his partner Miguel have asked Chad's sister Gretchen to donate her eggs so they can try to start a family. Fortysomething Gretchen is unhappily married to Troy; they have a young boy named Gray. Chad and Miguel still need a surrogate for the baby. They run into Emily, an old high school friend of Miguel's who offers to be their surrogate. She is married to Nick, a playwright/actor, and they have two kids. Also involved in this complicated situation is Lina, Miguel's troubled sister, who begins an affair with Nick after appearing in his play. Much of the book revolves around struggles in the characters' relationships with one another and the secrets that could tear them apart. VERDICT Funny and also dark, with likable characters, Frangello's novel is recommended for fans of witty fiction such as titles by Curtis Sittenfeld.--Holly Skir, York Coll., CUNY

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2016
Chad and his longtime lover, Miquel, are ready to have a child. Surrogacy is the best option, and fortunately, Chad's sister, Gretchen, has agreed to be the egg donor. Miquel has recruited an old high-school friend, Emily, to be the carrier, and she even convinces her husband, Nick, to be the sperm donor after Miquel tests positive for syphilis. If this isn't complicated enough, add the fact that Nick is having an affair with Miquel's lesbian sister, Lina, and that, as the biological mother of her brother's unborn child, Gretchen considers suing for custody. Toss in the secret surrounding Lina's parentage and her family's escape from Venezuela, and special-needs children in both Gretchen's and Emily's families, and one begins to question the wisdom of bringing yet another child into the fractured world these particular people inhabit. It would all be ludicrous if intrepid novelist Frangello (A Life in Men, 2014) didn't make it seem eminently plausible, and it would be unfathomable were it not for Frangello's poised and intuitive handling of the complexities of damaged and fragmented families.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)