Every Kind of Wanting

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. (Sept.)