We All Want Impossible Things
Book description
“Catherine Newman sees the heartbreak and comedy of life with wisdom and unflinching compassion. The way she finds the extraordinary in the everyday is nothing short of poetry. She’s a writer’s writer—and a human’s human.”—New York Times bestselling author Katherine Center
“A riotously funny and fiercely loyal love letter to…
Why read it?
3 authors picked We All Want Impossible Things as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I fell in love with Ash and her best friend Edi before I was halfway down the first page. I can see why other readers have compared this book to Nora Ephron’s novels. It’s funny, heart-filled, sexy, and sweet, but never twee. I could totally relate to Ash, who grieves unconventionally and tries to be the best friend, mother, and human in the world while secretly rebelling and acting up.
Most of all, I adored how this book focuses on family and how we build our families through love. It’s a book I haven’t stopped talking about since I read…
From Daisy's list on break your heart, then put it back together again.
The book is set during Ash's best friend Edi's hospice stay. Far from being maudlin or cliched, the book is hilarious as well as tragic.
Ash is so incredibly real and flawed, as is the cast of rotating visitors and hospital staffers. Reading it makes you feel okay about your own questionable life decisions, if you've been reflecting on your choices, as I was when I read it, LOL! I didn't want this book to end as much as I didn't want Edi's life to end.
This is the most devastatingly beautiful book.
It is deeply, deeply sad and yet also uplifting and life-affirming, perhaps surprisingly so for a novel that is largely about the end of a life. Edi and Ash have been best friends since childhood. For 40 years they have been through every milestone together and share many memories. Now their friendship is in its final days.
Edi is suffering from incurable ovarian cancer and doesn’t very have long left. And Ash’s world is reshaping itself around the hospice where she is slowly dying. It all sounds too sad to bear but even…
From Nicky's list on all the feels.
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