'Want Not' by Jonathan Miles

Want Not, Jonathan Miles (3.5)

Mr. Miles’ second novel follows three stories of disparate, relatively unlikely people in and around New York City. They are all related to various types of waste in our culture and somewhat converge near the very end of the book. The first follows a young ‘freegan’ couple living off the grid in NYC. The book starts with one of them bemoaning the enormous amount of edible waste from society while dumpster diving and retrieving examples. In the second, we find a sad sap of a fellow, having just hit a deer on his way home from a late night out drinking, decides to pack it into his jeep, take it home and butcher it at 2am. This comes across as a symptom of the mid-life crisis he suffers, seemingly due to his wife’s recent affair and their subsequent separation. The last begins with a mother going through the belongings of her husband, who died several years ago in the World Trade Center 9/11 attacks. The twist is that immediately after his death, she discovered that he had been having an affair, which caused her conflicting feelings of betrayal and grief. This story evolves into more about her new husband (a questionable fellow who runs a more questionable business) and her daughter from the first marriage. Overall I found this book interesting. The characters are fresh and well written and the underlying message is important. There were a couple of points with regards to the messaging for the nuclear waste site that were particularly thought provoking. Given that, I was a little disappointed in the climax. It felt rushed and a bit thin compared to the rest of the story.