Book Review: "We All Want Impossible Things" by Catherine Newman

Used bookshops are great for getting not only great deals but books that are actually good quality (though they have clearly been read) on the cheap. I don't tend to care for buying brand new books with all the rising prices. I mean I went to Foyles recently and there were paperbacks for extortionate prices, I had noticed how much they were increasing. Books that would have been around £7.99 had gone up to over £10. Am I getting more book? No. Am I getting any extras? No. Are more people reading so there's a supply and demand issue? Obviously not (look around, people). It's greedy capitalism striking again. In other words, I now seek out used bookshops and eBay for the cheapest possible prices. I can wait a few days for them to come it's alright. Let's have a look at my latest pick-up then... We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman is such a heartfelt story about what happens to a forty-year friendship when one friend gets diagnosed with cancer.

Ash and Edi have been friends for forty years and now, Edi has cancer, Ash is constantly worried she's going to lose her friend. Meanwhile, there's a whole host of things happening in their real lives. Belle, Ash's daughter, is growing up and spends some of her time cooking but other times - she is clearly a very thoughtful teenager. However, throughout the book we get taken back and forth through flashbacks upon childhood and teen years before returning to the horrifying present. We get insight into Ash and Edi's shared past and how they both grew up together. But then we are thrown back into the present. This kind of reminds me of a concept in the book The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot where we get whole histories of people who are in hospitals and hospices, a whole life that was entirely lived. But then again, we must face the present reality that they are going to die as well.

Edi often calls on Ash for things like requiring water and being absolutely drenched - she often cries about the fact that she won't see her son, Dash, grow up. However, I do have to say that I found Ash's romantic escapades following her marriage breakdown to be really annoying. I didn't care too much that she was sleeping around after her divorce and it interrupted the main point of the story and the deep feelings of grief we felt for Edi. This would be the only real criticism I have of the book. The whole storyline of Ash's romantic instability takes us out of the moment in ways where it is difficult to get back in.

Whenever they're in the hospice together they talk of all things, Fiddler on the Roof is playing at full volume because of another resident, and there's a hunt for the favourite Sicilian Lemon Cake of Edi, who is getting weaker by the day. I would like to say that Catherine Newman's ability to write this close friendship is really quite incredible. The reader will both laugh and cry, we will be taken on a journey lasting forty years in singular moments, we get to see things like music therapy, heartbreak and important memories.

I think there's something really deep and meaningful about this book and I've read some reviews stating that they didn't like Ash for being self-absorbed. But let's look at it like this: when you're best (and in some cases only real) friend is dying, your life could become a mess. Ash's life is already a bit messy even though there's no real stakes there until Edi is in hospice care. So I'm not sure, I don't think she's that self-absorbed, I just think she's trying to make sense of everything - all of this stuff, she hasn't experienced before. It would therefore, at times, make her seem like she's being self-absorbed. Apart from her terrible romantic takes, I don't think she's as selfish as people are making her out to be.

All in all, this was a fun book. It covers a tense topic yes, but it is really a celebration of friendship and how destabilising dealing with someone who is dying can be. We see Edi die almost in real-time, she is a brilliant character with such incredible depth that even in the midst of the book, we feel upset to lose her too.