Laurie Colwin – författare

“Laurie Colwin’s beautiful final book, A Big Storm Knocked It Over, is funny and moving and rich with complicated happiness—a love story for anyone who tends to overthink things, a comic novel about trying to find a place in the world.” — Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It

In her fifth and final novel, acclaimed author Laurie Colwin explores marriage and friendship, motherhood and careers, as experienced by a cast of delightfully idiosyncratic Manhattanites. At once a hilarious social commentary and an insightful, sophisticated modern romance, A Big Storm Knocked It Over stands as a living tribute to one of contemporary fiction’s most original and beloved voices.

In her late thirties, Jane Louise Parker has just married a man whose native decency leaves her almost breathless at her good fortune. After the wedding, she returns to work at a small and tony publishing house whose finances are in disarray. Alongside her best friend, Edie, Jane Louise patiently waits to become pregnant, wondering if a baby will provide a sense of rootedness that still seems to elude her. When that longed-for child arrives, it transforms the Parkers’ lives in a way that is as unexpected as it is rapturous.

With a new foreword by Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, the triumphant sequel to Home Cooking by “a home cook, like you and me, whose charm and lack of pretension make her wonderfully human and a welcome companion as she chatters on about the small culinary accomplishments and discoveries that occur in her kitchen” (Chicago Tribune). 

Lucky readers in the 1970s and ’80s discovered Laurie Colwin’s urbane, witty fiction in The New Yorker, as well as her warm, engaging food writing in Gourmet magazine columns. More Home Cooking, the second collection of these columns, is an expression of Colwin’s lifelong passion for cuisine and offers a delightful mix of recipes, advice, and personal anecdotes from the kitchen and beyond. She muses over the many charms and challenges of cooking at home in timeless essays including “Desserts That Quiver,” “Real Food for Tots,” and “Catering on One Dollar a Head.”

As informative as it is entertaining, and filled with Colwin’s trademark down-to-earth charm and wit, More Home Cooking is a rare treat for anyone who spends time in the kitchen and feels “like having a great conversation with someone that you love” (Samantha Bee).

“Laurie Colwin’s beautiful final book, A Big Storm Knocked It Over, is funny and moving and rich with complicated happiness—a love story for anyone who tends to overthink things, a comic novel about trying to find a place in the world.” — Maile Meloy, author of Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It

In her fifth and final novel, acclaimed author Laurie Colwin explores marriage and friendship, motherhood and careers, as experienced by a cast of delightfully idiosyncratic Manhattanites. At once a hilarious social commentary and an insightful, sophisticated modern romance, A Big Storm Knocked It Over stands as a living tribute to one of contemporary fiction’s most original and beloved voices.

In her late thirties, Jane Louise Parker has just married a man whose native decency leaves her almost breathless at her good fortune. After the wedding, she returns to work at a small and tony publishing house whose finances are in disarray. Alongside her best friend, Edie, Jane Louise patiently waits to become pregnant, wondering if a baby will provide a sense of rootedness that still seems to elude her. When that longed-for child arrives, it transforms the Parkers’ lives in a way that is as unexpected as it is rapturous.

“Poignant and hilarious . . . . Irresistible.” — Washington Post

One of the most beloved novels from the critically acclaimed novelist Laurie Colwin, Goodbye Without Leaving explores a woman’s attempts to reconcile her rock-and-roll past with her significantly more sedate family life as a wife and mother.

As a bored graduate student, Geraldine Coleshares is plucked from her too-tame existence when she is invited to tour as the only white backup singer for Vernon and Ruby Shakely and the Shakettes. The exciting years she spends as a Shakette are a mixed blessing, however, because when she ultimately submits to a conventional life of marriage and children, she finds herself stuck in bittersweet recollections of life on the road. As she grudgingly searches for a path toward happiness that doesn't involve a Day-Glo neon minidress, readers will be enchanted by Geraldine’s attempts to grow up, even though she’s already an adult.

Employing Colwin’s usual dry wit and candor, Goodbye Without Leaving is a classic novel from the writer hailed as “ingenious, comic, and spirited” by the Boston Globe and “a writer of originality and vision" by the San Francisco Chronicle.

''Seriously wise, seriously wonderful, seriously comic - your life will be richer for it'' Katherine HeinyGuido and Vicent - third cousins and best friends - spend their time lolling around and wondering who they will marry. Then, one wet Sunday afternoon in a museum, Gudio meets Holly. Precise about everything, Holly knows what she likes: pressed sheets, tea on a tray - and now, Guido. Soon after, Vincent falls for his misanthropic new colleague, Misty. She seems completely uninterested in love, until she agrees to go to dinner with Vincent. This exquisitely well-written and much-beloved novel follows the two couples through courtship, arguments, wedding plans and other perils, as they find a way to be happy (almost) all the time.A W&N Essential with an introduction from Katherine Heiny