Catherine Newman is the New York Times bestselling author of We All Want Impossible Things, Sandwich and Wreck, which capture with humour the messy realities of family, grief and middle-age. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and they have two grown-up children. Here she recommends her three holiday reads.Â
I can’t help recommending Whistler by Ann Patchett, not because it is especially holiday-themed (it’s not) but because it’s as perfect a novel as I can think of – quiet, profound, funny, and so, so tender – and you deserve to read a perfect novel while you’re on holiday, rather than the kind of book that just sticks to your sunscreened thighs over the course of a day of not remembering to pick it up.
Amity Gaige’s novel Heartwood is newer and so, so gripping and good – it’s inspired by a true story of a woman lost in the woods – but her previous book Sea Wife is holiday perfection because it is set on the sea! Harrowingly so, but still. And she somehow turns a nail-biting sailboat thriller into a brilliant revelation about the perils of marriage and motherhood and weirdly adventurous men. I love this book so much.Â
I often recommend Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake to holiday-goers because I read it myself while on holiday, and it was the most perfect reading experience of my life: me and my sleeping babies zipped into a mosquito net while a heap of wedding revellers danced on the Tulum beach outside our window. It’s a quiet page-turner and Lahiri’s prose is jaw-droppingly graceful. Plus, I am a child of immigrants, and I love reading books about children of immigrants.
