Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir Waiting For Birdy. She is the etiquette columnist for Real Simple magazine, a regular contributor to the New York Times Motherlode blog, and editor-in-chief of the James Beard Award winning kids cooking magazine ChopChop. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her family.
"Hilarious, wise, sometimes neurotic and always delicious.
Catherine Newman is a brilliant observer of contemporary
parenthood."--Claire Messud
"You know those taunting posts that promise to make you "feel all
the feels" only to leave you annoyed and let down? This is not one
of those times. Catherine Newman's new essay collection on raising
her two kids will make you laugh, cry, worry with her, and wish
that you could make even the messiest, hardest, most crazy-making
days with your children last just a little bit longer."
--FamilyFun
Praise for Catastrophic Happiness "Ultimately the most fascinating
character isn't her family, but Newman herself. This is because the
book's force lies not in what it tells us about parenting, but in
its sensitive portrayal of the blurring of self that happens after
one has children. . . For Newman, this question of where she begins
and ends is less of a riddle than a Buddhist koan. Wisely, she
never tries to solve it. Her goal, in parenting and in writing, is
only to figure out how to love from within it."--Elissa Strauss,
New York Times Book Review
"Catastrophic Happiness celebrates the absurdly lovely mess of the
parenting years."
--More
"Catastrophic Happiness is everything I could have hoped it might
be. Reading it, I kept wanting to throw a fist in the air and
scream, THANK YOU CATHERINE! I had the strangest and most wonderful
feeling that she had climbed inside my head and knew exactly what I
needed to hear."
--Molly Wizenberg, author of Orangette blog and the books A
Homemade Life and Delancey
"Catastrophic Happiness unearthed all the moments I forgot to
remember, things I meant to write down and preserve before they
faded. As I read, I smiled and nodded, reliving, through Newman's
heartbreakingly beautiful prose, the most golden--and the most
gruesome--moments of my parenting life."--Jessica Lahey, author of
New York Times bestseller The Gift of Failure
"A gorgeous love letter to parenting. Nobody beats Catherine Newman
for cracking you up while breaking your heart--and somehow teaching
the wise things you always meant to learn along the way."
--Katherine Center, author of Happiness for Beginners
"A series of essays, which masterfully combine story and
reflection...Newman's observations run the gamut from deep and
profound to hilarious and true. Newman has a true gift for making
the reader feel intimately connected to her family. In Catastrophic
Happiness Newman has trapped lightning in a jar, allowing us all to
admire its dazzle. In her book's short, lovely pages she captures
life as a mother, life as a human being, life in general, in all of
its gorgeous, complicated grandeur."--Lindsey Mead, Brain,
Child
"An intimate account about the hectic joy of raising children and
embracing the silver lining of all those inevitable
hair-pulling-out mom moments."--Glamour.com
"Catherine Newman could write about watching paint dry and manage
to be both funny and profound. Her musings on motherhood and its
attendant heartbreak will have you laughing out loud, nodding
gratefully in agreement, and grasping for a Kleenex. There's no
other writer I want accompanying me through my own journey in
mothering."
--Luisa Weiss, author of My Berlin Kitchen and founder of The
Wednesday Chef
"I was reluctant to relive early parenting, but from the first
sentence, Catastrophic Happiness had me on the verge of tears and
laughter. But honestly, Catherine Newman could write about the
black mold that lines my kitchen sink and I would be captivated and
moved. She is that awesome of a writer. I pray that she writes
about teenagers, menopause, and old age, because I will be right
there with her, ready for her words to help me through."
--Phyllis Grant, author of the Dash and Bella blog
"I've already read most of this book twice because that's the kind
of book it is. You pick it up for laughs at the end of a long day
and before you fall asleep, there are tears in your eyes. Your
husband looks at you funny and you tell him, 'Yes I'm reading it
again.' If you are a parent, this is the book you need to
read."
--Cammie McGovern, author of Say What You Will and A Step Towards
Falling
"In writing that comes close to poetry, Newman really does manage
to capture this bittersweet side of parenting, without
overemphasizing either the bitter or the sweet. It's the two
together that epitomize the job of raising and loving people who
are destined to grow up and leave you, and her ability to see this
that makes this book so uniquely good."--Malena Watrous, San
Francisco Chronicle
"Laugh-out-loud funny. Newman brings tears and laughter and truth
to the inexplicable-like the demanding aimlessness of her
children's stories-pairing some very effective anecdotes with the
boredom, pride, disgust, and joy of child-rearing."--Publishers
Weekly
"Newman's stories are specific and funny, and she writes about the
gamut of emotions we feel but can't always verbalize for ourselves.
(She) takes her readers along for a fascinating, yet comfortingly
familiar, ride of family life."
--Kristen Kemp, Parents Magazine
"Our generation's 'Poet Laureate of Parenthood'....There is no one
else who reports from the parenting trenches better than Catherine
Newman. Everything that makes raising kids so wonderfully
unforgettable is here--the exhaustion, the hilarity, the fear, the
self-doubt, the sweetness. Especially the sweetness. Even though
she sugarcoats nothing--that's what sticks."
--Jenny Rosenstrach, blogger and author of Dinner, A Love Story
"Part of what makes Ms. Newman so good is her butterfly prose,
colorful and light on its feet; part of it is her marvelous ability
to reassure. It's affirming for parents to see their lives
reflected back at them, and in a theme-park fun house no less, with
all of the dreary bits made stretchy and silly. I adore her
sideways sense of humor."
--Jennifer Senior, New York Times
"The poignancy, mania, and hilarity of parenthood drenches this
delicious book. Catherine Newman divulges more than her own
maternal peaks and valleys-- she offers us a way of looking at our
own precious day-to-day. This book is flat-out honest, and it teems
with humor and sweetness."
--Amity Gaige, author of Schroder
"This is a book about mothers and children, or really, about how
the job of mothering changes a woman, inevitably, irrevocably, and
sometimes uncomfortably. Newman's self-awareness is what makes the
book work; it's a portrait of striving toward a perfection that
never existed, while loving the imperfection that surrounds
us."
--Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe
"Winsome and funny."
--People Magazine
"You know how parenting books don't actually really help? Catherine
Newman's book is the opposite. Totally personal and weirdly
relatable, it soothes, inspires, and fascinates me. She manages to
make me LOL and want to run upstairs and smell the heads of my
sleeping children."--Kate Schatz, New York Times bestselling author
of Rad American Women A-Z and Rid of Me, A Story
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