Liska Jacobs

To coolheaded, fastidious Pricilla Messing, Italy will be an escape, a brief glimpse of freedom from a life that’s starting to feel like one long decline. Rescued from the bedside of her difficult mother, 40-something Cilla finds herself called away to Rome to keep an eye on her wayward teenage niece, Hannah. But after years of caregiving, babysitting is the last thing Cilla wants to do. Instead she throws herself into Hannah’s youthful, heedless world – relishing the heady atmosphere of the Italian summer. But being so close to Hannah brings up complicated memories, making Cilla restless and increasingly reckless, and a dangerous flirtation with a teenage boy soon threatens to send her into a tailspin. In The Worst Kind of Want (MCD), Liska Jacobs again delivers hypnotic literary noir about a woman whose unruly desires and troubled past push her to the brink of disaster.