A Big Storm Knocked It Over: A Novel

“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.

“I would love. . . to start a Colwin renaissance.” - Elin Hilderbrand, on NPR’s “All Things Considered”

“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

“I’ve read and re-read every book by Laurie Colwin. Acutely observed, beautifully written, witty, and profound—each one is a delight.” - Gretchen Rubin, author of Happier at Home and The Happiness Project

"Laurie Colwin was utterly fearless in writing about happiness. . . . The novel makes the idea of happy endings for decent people seem entirely plausible, almost inevitable—no small feat for a writer these days and no small pleasure for a reader." - New York Times

"From the first sentence of A Big Storm Knocked It Over, beguiling words and an engaging ambience combine to seduce us." - Washington Post Book World

"Laurie Colwin's last and most touching work." - Boston Globe