We All Want Impossible Things: The funny, moving Richard and Judy Book Club pick 2023

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I loved the way Edi's family and friends farewelled her, how they all supported and cared for one another. Gloriously funny, utterly heartbreaking, and really just brilliant, We All Want Impossible Things is one of the best novels on friendship I've ever read. It creates levity and allows space for the characters — Ashley in particular — to exist as three-dimensional and flawed in their well-meaning attempts to be there for Edi. The “I’m dying” and “it’s killing me” statements we all make and try to eject from our vocabulary when visiting someone in hospice who’s actually dying?

Newman perfectly captures the beauty and burden of caring for someone in their final moments while showing the gift of Edi and Ash's once-in-a-lifetime friendship. I have also written the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night (Random House), Stitch Camp, which is a kids' craft book I co-wrote with my friend Nicole, and the award-winning bestselling skill-building books for kids How to Be a Person and What Can I Say? This wonderful novel tells the story of Edi’s last days with the appearance of hospice characters such as Cedar with his guitar and Doctor “Soprano” with the accompaniment of Fiddler on the Roof blasting out at full volume in the background. Author Mallery has created a delightful story of friendship between three women that also offers a variety of love stories as they fall in love, make mistakes, and figure out how to be the best—albeit still flawed—versions of themselves. There is so much love, funniness, honesty, courage, mess, bounce, and surprise in this book, and not a shred of it is mawkish.At another point, the author’s high school daughter tells the author to get over herself and act more mature towards her ex-husband. All the characters, even the supporting ones, are very well-developed and they ask have their own distinct storylines that all diverge with Edi and her illness. The author is also frank about the physical reality of cancer and explicitly shows how grueling it can be to care for a friend while watching them die – there are falls and tears, leaking tubes that soak Edi in bile, and gradual changes to Edi’s appearance and mental state as the end draws near. I did have some initial difficulty in keeping the characters straight in my mind: Jude, Jules, Jonah; but this didn't last long. I have heard nothing but good things about [ We All Want Impossible Things] and they were all quite right - it's so warm and funny and full of great observations .

We talked to some of our graphic designers to learn more about the amazing book covers they created this year. The author injects the ironic note of Ashley’s sexual reawakening as the life force drains from her dearest friend.A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. Sometimes they’re overly nice, in the cases of Ash’s husband with the annoying name of Honey and her too-wise-and-tolerant teenage daughter, Belle.

Her family, her kids, her friends—everyone just caters to her narcissism and affirms her bad behavior. What the book is really about is a self absorbed woman going through a mid life crisis who also happens to be caring for her friend in hospice. Ashley has her own smaller battles going on, as her rotating cast of bed mates includes everyone from her (mostly)ex-husband Honey to Edi's own brother(! Shining a light on both the failings of the system and the clan’s desperate situation, it’s a justifiably enraging, moving and timely work. The doctor and nurse and music therapist are all sleeping with the patient’s loved ones, the doctor is asking for and taking a piece of Edi’s weed-laced chocolate at her bedside…I’m a nurse and I’ve worked on hospice floors before and can’t imagine anything so unethical happening as what happened in this book.There is the hunt for Edi’s all time favourite Sicilian lemon polenta pound cake, the magic of music, questions of life and death, painting nails, the wonders of Farrah Fawcett and Pinky Pie, and stepping into an emotional quagmire as Ash tries to work out what to hold onto and when to let go.