Wanting by Claire Jia (Tin House) ~Janet Brown

Lian and Wenyu are unlikely friends. When they first met, Lian was the good girl, carefully dressed and diligently scholastic. Wenyu was the rebel, the one who shoplifted for kicks, rarely wore the school uniform, and chose the most dangerous guy in her class as her boyfriend. Lian read the Harry Potter books in English. Wenyu cut class and was frequently suspended from school. Lian’s goal was Harvard. Wenyu had no goals but her father had a friend in California whose guest room would soon be hers. When she left Beijing, the two girls lost touch. 

Now Wenyu is coming home, a glamorous social media influencer with a rich American fiance. Lian, who never made it to her dream schools in America, has a promising career that’s the result of going to one of Beijing’s top universities. She and her boyfriend are looking at high-rise apartments in the capitol’s finest neighborhoods. Her life is good. Wenyu’s is fabulous. 

As the women rekindle their friendship, Lian finds Wenyu is still the same predatory thrill-seeker she was as a teenager, with her wealth giving her the freedom to do whatever she likes. When she begins a clandestine flirtation with her old high school boyfriend, Lian develops an illicit diversion of her own. 

But this isn’t a Beijing version of Gossip Girl. Claire Jia changes her focus mid-novel by introducing the architect who’s supervising the building of Wenyu’s mansion. Song Chen lives a universe away from the Beijing that Lian and Wenyu have made their own. He and his wife are successful but their standard of living reflects the frugality of 20th Century China. Educated in the U.S., they never succumbed to its culture. Now their primary goal is to buy a luxurious apartment for their only child and his prospective bride.

The contrast between the life led by Chen and his wife as it’s juxtaposed against those of Lian and Wenyu is shocking. One of Lian’s friends, who returned to Beijing with her American degree and a Power Point presentation for the start-up that’s launched her wealth, recently purchased an apartment for 9 million renminbi (over a million U.S. dollars). Another friend stands at a party with her husband, who holds “her Chanel purse like it was a crying baby.” At Wenyu’s engagement party in a Beijing speakeasy, the banquet tables are brimming with hors d’oeuvres that are as chic and decadent as any in the most fashionable restaurants in Manhattan. “Romance was dead and replaced with a BMW and a lifetime membership to Space Cycle.”

Meanwhile Chen curries favor with a low-level bureaucrat by bringing a bottle of whiskey and a bag of dates to the man’s office. He drives a Mazda that’s far from new and his apartment is filled with cooking odors and traffic noises. His marriage is on the rocks and when his wife leaves on a trip to see old college friends in America, he falls into a guilt-ridden affair with a woman who works in the low-level bureaucrat’s office. 

The contrasts turn sharp and cruel as Wanting reaches its conclusion. While lies are pretty little soap bubbles to Wenyu and Lian, to Chen and his wife, they’re butcher knives, brutal and destructive. 

Claire Jia’s first book takes on the form of an old-fashioned novel, one that mingles a comedy of modern manners, a domestic tragedy, the perils of online fame, and more than a few almost improbable coincidences that come together in ways that evoke Dickens, if not Shakespeare. She’s cleverly and concisely revealed Beijing, with all of its glittering wealth and dark anomalies, and sets a high standard for future debut fiction.