Whatever I wanted, it wasn't this clumsily constructed, overly contrived but largely empty story.

Judging from the critical acclaim this novel received, I'm in the minority in seeing this particular emperor as naked.

"He Wants" was The Observer Book of the Year in 2014, which asserted, ‘Moore movingly mines the aching gap between aspiration and actuality.’ The Guardian called it "brave and rigorous’. The Financial Times declared, ‘Moore is a serious talent. There’s art here. There’s care.’

My experience of "He Wants" was very different. I read a book that was reaching for profundity wrapped in a fable but only achieved monotony, wrapped in astute and sometimes funny observations on what it feels like to grow old.

I'm in my sixties and I smiled at how well Moore captured the small assaults of old age on wellbeing. The prose was sparse but evocative, especially when summoning childhood memories. The opening was intriguing and promised much but the middle and the end delivered very little.

The framework of the story kept trying to link the action (such as it was) to a wider exploration of what we want and what we don't want and what we do about the gap between what we want and what we have but it was done in a very heavy-handed, sometimes clumsy way, that distracted from the story.

My main stumbling point was that I neither believed in nor cared about either of the two main characters.

Lewis Sullivan, widower and retired Secondary School RE teacher is, in his sixties, a boy-man afraid of the world and so passive and cautious that he's one step away from being put into care. Yet he doesn't come across as tragic or even interesting, just irredeemably dull and timid. Sydney, Lewis' anarchic childhood friend / teenboy crush, who, after disappearing for decades, returns from prison just in time to move the story towards its denouement, is at best and archetype and at worst a caricature.

The plot relies heavily upon co-incidence but doesn't use the co-incidences to go anywhere except around in circles of ever-diminishing meaning.

"He Wants" had me starting by wanting it to be as intriguing as it seemed to be, moved me swiftly on to wanting it to be less empty than it seemed to be and ended with me just wanting it to be over. ( )

Didn't really get this, lots of loose ends and only just kept going with it. ( )

I liked this book, but a story about an older man with a parent in a nursing home is pretty sure to get my interest. I think I particularly relate to the main character's reflections on his childhood experiences. Nearly all the major characters in this novel are men - perhaps unusual for a female author - but I think Moore has a good understanding of what a man's life is like. Perhaps she knows one or more men well. The book encouraged me to reflect on my own life, past and present - and future too. That makes it a worthwhile read for me. ( )

He does sleep through earthquakes. There was one recently, with a magnitude of three, right where he lives but he was unaware of it until he read about it in the paper in due course. He would like to experience an earthquake, to feel the ground shaking beneath him, to feel the bed trembling, all the ornaments rattling like something out of an exorcism.

Lewis, a 70 year old retired Religious Education teacher, does sleep through earthquakes. As he sleeps through so many other things that could have changed the course of his life. He aches for Beef Wellington, but ends up eating his daughters cold soup. He dreams of flying to Australia, but he never travels anywhere. And then there’s a denial of even deeper desires.

But then he meets his old schoolfriend Sydney - a whimsical, rather mysterious character with his yellow Saab and Golden Retriever - and Lewis starts to wake up.

Desire, regret, fear - all of these primal emotions is in play in this well-crafted, suspenseful novel - that also contains a lot of dry humor. You can just feel that a lot of thought have gone into every element, every sentence of this story. Like the many references to yellow and gold - suggesting something wild, colorful and dramatic set against the mundane and drab lonely life of Lewis.

One thing we now have to expect from Moore is the surprising endings. In “The Lighthouse” it was brutal - in this one it felt surreal, dreamlike. I flipped back and reread bits of several chapters and there’s clues along the way. That is brilliant writing.

I also like the dry humor. Like the repeated references to Goldschläger, the Swiss liqueur with bits of gold in it….an exotic and mysterious drink.

”Have you ever had it”, asks Lewis, taking a sip of his shandy.
“No”, she says.
Lewis shakes his head. What kind of a man, he thinks, walks around asking for Swiss liqueurs with bits of gold in? He stands at the bar with his drink, thinking about the things he’s never had and never will.

hmmm…I might try to order a Goldschläger today. ( )

"He always imagined living by the sea, perhaps in his retirement. But he is seventy years old now, retired years ago, and still living in this village in the Midlands, less than a mile from the house which grew up and around the corner from the school in which he has spent the best part of his life." (62)

Lewis Sullivan is seventy, widowed, and a retired Religious Studies teacher. He lives a mile from his childhood home. Ruth, his adult daughter, visits every day, bringing him soup he doesn’t want; and he spend his evenings at his second-favourite pub. But his comfortable routine is shaken up when his old school chum, Sydney Flynn – a ruffian ex-convict who now writes romance novels under a pseudonym – turns up.

The aptly named He Wants contemplates desire – so many of which, for Lewis, have been thwarted by the passing of time and by age. He resignedly recalls his life’s desires, which now appear as missed opportunities – or the result of his decisions to settle for safer choices – or perhaps both. But the novel is much more than this, too. Lewis’ reminiscences are combined with astute observances about the idiosyncrasies and impersonality of our modern world: we smoke electronic cigarettes, digitally announce our arrival to the doctor’s office, while we sit for photographs in which we are no longer allowed to smile. In fact, socially speaking, we have almost perfected complete alienation from one another:

"Lewis remembers how the mobile library tipped very slightly towards you as you entered, when you put your weight on the steps, and how it swayed underfoot while you were browsing … In the town library now, you don't take your books to the lady behind the desk, you put them into an opening in a big black machine that scans them. You can leave without speaking to a soul." (17)

Written in the same spare and effortless prose as The Lighthouse, Moore has followed up with a most worthy read in He Wants – quiet and entertaining and entirely thought-provoking. I am reminded of Gerbrand Bakker and Per Pettersen, whose work I also love. Highly, highly recommended. ( )