Cottage For Sale: A Woman Moves a House to Make a Home
By Kate Whouley
Paperback | 5.25 X 8.5 | 300 pages | September 3, 2024 | ISBN: 978-1-961864-10-8
Book Sense Book-of-the Year Finalist
Memoir-of-the Month, Book-of-the-Month Club Judge’s Choice and Featured Alternate
Chapter-A-Day Read Aloud Selection
USA Today Cool Summer Read
Reading Group Choices Selection
Cottage For Sale, Must Be Moved: A Woman Moves a House to Make A Home By Kate Whouley.
The new edition celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the quirky and beloved memoir that has become a Cape Cod classic. Including a new chapter by the author that catches readers up on the cottage, Kate, and the current Cat-in-Charge.
When Kate Whouley saw the classified ad for an abandoned cottage that had to be moved, she began to dream. Transport the cottage…attach it to my three-room house…create more space for my work and life….Smart, single, and self-employed, Whouley was used to fending for herself. But she wasn’t prepared for half the complications of her house-moving adventures. Supported by loyal friends, and egged on by her bossy gray cat, Whouley encountered a parade of town officials, a small convoy of State Police (who escorted her cottage, with lights flashing, through four Cape Cod towns), and an army of house-moving, home-building men. Like the cottage on wheels, Kate Whouley takes the back roads, with a keen eye for the inner scenery. For everyone who has ever dreamed of creating a space of their own, there is a cottage for sale. You only have to move it.
Reviews
“…an odyssey of confusion, consternation, and light comedy… there is so much here you will want to read it twice… a cast of characters that range from interesting to eccentric, a series of misadventures that might have come from a comic novel, and a narrative style that makes you keep turning the pages. It’s one of those books in which the author has taken something personal and made it universal.”
~ Booklist
“This sweetly meandering tale of love will have you wanting your own cottage, to fill with books and friends!”
~ Susan Hermann Loomis, author of On Rue Tatin“Whouley’s gentle memoir…deftly explores the themes of independence, pride of place and loss…”
~ The New York Times“It was with deep pleasure that I followed Kate Whouley on this fine adventure of domestic wildness.”
~ David Gessner, author of Return of the Osprey“…an almost Holy Grail quest… highly entertaining.”
~ The Wall Street JournalI read Cottage for Sale in one sitting! Whouley’s saga of buying and moving a cottage is also a parallel story of independence and can-do spirit that will make you cheer.”
~ Cindy Crosby, author of By Willoway Brook“That Whouley is a natural born storyteller is evident from the first page of her book.”
~ The Cape Codder“In taking readers through the her cottage’s move across Cape Cod to be joined to her home, Whouley…guides us through her own life–a life rich in family, friends (including one of American literature’s most interesting cats), challenges, and personal growth and satisfaction…as beautifully written as any novel and as revealing and rewarding as the best memoirs.”
~ NightsAndWeekends.com“100% original and 100% enjoyable.”
~ Book-of-the-Month Club News“…there is so much here you will want to read it twice… a cast of characters that range from interesting to eccentric, a series of misadventures that might have come from a comic novel, and a narrative style that makes you keep turning the pages. It’s one of those books in which the author has taken something personal and made it universal.”
~ Booklist“… a delightful one-sitting read.”
~ The AAA Easy BookClub“…an engaging saga that should appeal to anyone who has actually accomplished such a project, or simply longed to do so.”
~ Foreword Magazine“…a pitch-perfect description of both small town life and personal anticipation…told in a voice of such good humor and thoughtful humanity… It is not simply about the marriage of a small house and smaller cottage, but about the hope we all find in home. I loved Cottage For Sale.”
~ Anna Quindlen, Book-of-the-Month Club News“… a tale with universal appeal, one that explores human nature and human endeavor with honesty and compassion.”
~ Barnstable PatriotAbout The Author
Kate Whouley is a contributing editor at Yankee magazine and the 2012 recipient of the New England Book Award in nonfiction for Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words. A longtime designer of independent bookstores, Kate currently directs the MFA program in creative writing at Bay Path University, and serves as the editor of Multiplicity, the literary magazine of the Bay Path MFA. Kate lives and writes on Cape Cod in a cottage that is no longer on the move.
