My Goodreads and Amazon review of We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman (Rating 5) – A Gift to Dying. We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman is the story of the lifelong friendship between two women, Ash and Edi, the latter now in hospice. As Edi moves towards death, Ash surrounds her with love and assembles a community of other family members, friends, and hospice workers to accompany her on this journey. The finality is painful, but the long days and dwindling hours are also filled with humor and outright joy for life’s gifts. Newman’s novel is a gift to dying. While aspects of the tale are somewhat idealized — the women’s friendship, their respective families, and the residential hospice facility itself — the bodily humiliation and emotional grief of death are portrayed with honesty. As a fiction writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I’m impressed by the authenticity of Newman’s characters, especially the self-absorbed but self-aware Ash. As a certified end-of-life doula, I appreciate the realistic depiction of dying. It’s messy and draining, but also a time to tie up loose ends and magnify love. Edi is faced and graced with it all. Don’t we all deserve the “good death” that Newman portrays?
