Madelaine Lucas’ debut novel Thirst for Salt (Tin House) investigates desire and its objects. How the former may constitute the latter—is desire itself what is desired?—is just one of the concerns that the book’s unnamed first-person narrator seeks to unpack. Unpack, for, as the narrator’s mother asks in reference to her daughter’s past (including her reminiscences of Jude, the novel’s focal bygone love), “Why carry all that around with you?”
