Aristotle’s definition of friendship as a single soul dwelling in two bodies comes to mind when reading Catherine Newman’s surprisingly uplifting debut novel, We All Want Impossible Things.
An exploration of what it means to be a friend through the good times and the bad, the book revolves around Edi and Ash, two American women in their 40s who have known each other since childhood. At this midpoint in life they have a host of shared experiences, from teenage concerts and vodka swilling, to more adult struggles such as infertility and marriage breakdown. Ash, the book’s narrator, puts the friendship in perspective: “Edi’s memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.”
This connection is about to be cruelly cut short, however, as Edi is in the final stages of terminal cancer. The book opens in a ward in Sloan Kettering, where a social worker delivers the “make the most of her remaining days” speech to Edi’s loved ones. That these days can take place anywhere but the hospital is related in a savagely comic manner that reflects the tone of the book as a whole. Newman manages to write about the messy business of life and death without ever seeming mawkish. There is a sprightly energy to her depiction of the last weeks of a person’s life that works in contrast to the act of death itself, so definite and unalterable.
Books where the outcome is known from the start – Fíona Scarlett’s Boys Don’t Cry is a fine recent example – hinge on the author’s ability to create empathy between character and reader. Newman is a natural at this, imbuing the narrative with a warmth that results in instant connection. The subject matter of the book – love, friendship, loss, life, death – is huge in scope but never appears this way on the page. Scenes of hospice life are spliced with anecdotes from the past that give glimpses of Ash and Edi’s friendship over time.
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One standout example is a memory of the girls backpacking in an age before mobile phones, deciding to meet in some random location on an Italian peninsula – chosen by pointing at a map – without any hope of contacting each other should the plan go awry: “If there’s a metaphor for our friendship, it might be this. The blind faith. The absolute dependability. The love like a compass, its north always true.”
While these insets from the past feel gloriously real, the present-day scenario doesn’t hold up quite as well. Edi says goodbye to her husband and young son weeks before she dies when Ash finds her a bed in a Massachusetts hospice (near Ash’s home) after they fail to find one in New York. Husband Jude remains in the city to look after their son, not reappearing until Edi is about to die, which somewhat stretches credibility.
Comparisons to Jenny Offill and Meg Mason, meanwhile, are overblown on a prose level. Newman’s writing style is more commercial, though her smart dialogue and cutting wit bear resemblance. “All your sweetheart underachiever bullshit is not aging well,” Edi gives Ash some straight-up, best friend advice. Ash’s own life is successfully played for laughs: her sort-of separation from her husband, Honey; her hilariously forthright teenage daughter, Belle; her new habit of sleeping with everyone in sight, from Edi’s brother to the staff at the hospice.
This last quirk is indicative of Newman’s style generally, a serious impulse – the desire to feel alive that links sex and death – exaggerated for comic effect: “I don’t say anything else for fear that I’ll mention how grindingly tired I am, how I actually just craved the desire, the before part, everybody wet and wanting, and then I wanted to climb out of bed and put my pajamas on – pull on the flannel bottoms and button the top all the way up – and curl against her quietly and go to sleep.”
Newman is an award-winning writer and columnist whose books include the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, and the children’s books One Mixed-Up Night and Stitch Camp. In her debut novel for adults, she excels at navigating the practicalities and banalities of dying while staying attuned to the comic absurdity beneath: “Life is just seesawing between the gorgeous and the menacing – like when you go for a run and one minute the whole neighbourhood is lilacs in purple bloom, and then the next it’s stained boxer shorts and an inside-out latex glove.”
The superb ending rolls in before you know it and even though you know what’s coming, there’s the sense of being upended. The narrative arc of such stories might be predictable, as Ash wryly notes, but in the hands of an accomplished writer like Newman, it still leaves the reader wanting impossible things.
