An Evening with Catherine Newman & Rachel Joyce

Join bestselling authors Catherine Newman (We All Want Impossible Things, Sandwich and Wreck) and Rachel Joyce (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Miss Benson's Beetle and The Homemade God), in conversation with Emily Devane about the theme of family in their latest novels.

Date: Thursday, 5 February

Time: 7-8.30pm

Tickets: £10

Venue: The Grove Bookshop (unless numbers exceed capacity, in which case we have a larger local venue 5 minutes from the shop - attendees will be informed if there is a venue change)

Tickets can be purchased in the shop or here via Eventbrite.

Refreshments will be served.

Our Guests

Catherine Newman is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, the kids’ craft book Stitch Camp (co-authored with Nicole Blum), the best-selling how-to books for kids How to Be a Person and What Can I Say? and the novels We All Want Impossible Things, Sandwich, and Wreck (forthcoming October 2025). She writes the Substack newsletter Crone Sandwich and has been a regular contributor to the New York Times, Real Simple, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and many other publications. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Rachel Joyce is the award-winning author of the the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, The Music Shop, Miss Benson’s Beetle and The Homemade God, as well as a collection of interlinked short stories, A Snow Garden & Other Stories. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and long listed for the Man Booker Prize. Rachel has been awarded the Specsavers New Writer of the Year National Book Award and shortlisted for the UK author of the year. Miss Benson’s Beetle was the winner of the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Her novels have sold over 5 million copies worldwide in thirty six languages.

About the books:

Wreck by Catherine Newman

Rocky, Nick, Willa and Jamie. A normal loving, anxious, messy, relatable, family.

Rocky has her own her way of processing disasters: 1. This could happen to us. 2. This couldn’t happen to us. And then there’s a secret third column: ‘This could happen to us unless I am very careful/ superstitious/ grateful…’

So when a former classmate of Jamie’s dies in a seemingly random accident, Rocky becomes obsessed. She's also developed a niggling medical condition that won't go away. On the surface, she is still living her best life as the irreverent, funny, unpredictable beating heart of her family. Her father is his unique, adorable self; Willa is prone to bouts of existential angst whilst berating the fact that her mother has zero filter; Nick is steady, logical, sometimes infuriating.

But if accidents can happen – and they do – is it safe to love anyone?

Laugh out loud funny and deeply emotional, Wreck follows Rocky and her family through one rollercoaster year as they share the unpredictable, beautiful messiness of life.

The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce

There is a heatwave across Europe.
Goose and his three sisters gather at the family's house by Lake Orta in Piedmont, Italy. Their father, a famous artist, has recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece. Now he is dead and there is no sign of a painting.

Although the siblings have always been close, as they search for answers over that summer, the things they learn - about themselves, their father and their new stepmother - will drive them apart before they can come to any kind of understanding of what their father's legacy truly is.

Extraordinarily compelling, at heart this is a novel about sibling relationships and those hairline cracks that can appear within a family: what what happens when they splinter, and what it would take to mend them.

Reviews:

Wreck:

"Endorsing a new Catherine Newman novel feels a bit like endorsing puppies or chocolate cake. It's a new Catherine Newman novel. Of course you want to read it. Wreck is a delight. What an absolute joy to be reunited with Rocky and her family, the characters we all fell in love with in Sandwich. Newman's prose is laugh-out-loud funny. It's also profound. I underlined so many passages in this treasure of a novel. It brought about that conundrum that the best books always do: I couldn't stop reading, even though I didn't want it to end." (J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs)

“Wreck is the kind of book that pulls up a chair, pours the wine, and dives deep—equal parts hilarious, sharp, and achingly sincere. It’s like spending hours with the friend who sees your mess and loves you more for it. I didn’t just read it—I felt known by it. A luminous, laugh-out-loud triumph by Newman.” (Alison Espach, New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding People)

The Homemade God:

'A thoroughly engaging examination of familial truths that define and endanger the precious, ever-precarious sibling bond. The beautiful writing, unforgettable characters, and stunning setting make this a must-read.' (Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry)

'Lyrical, shrewd and, ultimately, as indecently satisfying as a four course Italian lunch. My life is a little emptier now it's over.' (Patrick Gale, author of A Place Called Winter)