Harry Antlers, a once successful theatre director, falls obsessively in love with Viola Windrush when she comes to New York for an audition. He immediately sends her a hundred red roses and convinces himself that her lack of response is purely temporary. He is certain that if he makes enough extravagant and expensive gestures she will be his. There follows a wild pursuit, which takes Harry to Viola's beautiful old Norfolk house and to London, where she is decorating a flat for her uncle. Finally, Harry is driven to desperation ...The curious psychology of the obsessive is very cleverly drawn, for the reader can see all too clearly what Harry himself cannot -that his feelings are more those of a thwarted child than of an ardent suitor. WANTING's support characters come vividly to life: Mr Baxter, who caretakes Viola's Norfolk home; Gideon, Viola's brother, who leaves his glamorous and mercenary New York mistress to return to Norfolk where a young woman who has loved him since her youth hopefully awaits him; Edwin Hardley, the moth scholar known as Hardly There ...