Critical Praise

"An unflinching autopsy of the heart, laying bare the raw emotions that push us to reconfigure, again and again, our senses of family.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Noel’s second perceptive, character-driven novel, following HALFWAY HOUSE (2006), delves into multiple relationships and how they ebb and flow over the years…Noel writes with empathy and precision about the minutiae of the lives of her characters, drawing her readers immediately into their interwoven stories.” 

—Booklist

“Noel beautifully captures the difficulties and insecurities that make up marriage, sisterhood, and how our upbringing bleeds into our adulthood. Doubt and rediscovery abound in this heartfelt and heartbreaking story, showing how family can both bring us together and tear us apart.” 

—Library Journal

“Katharine Noel’s characters display the kind of rare authenticity that makes you certain that you’ve met them in real life. MEANTIME is a shrewd and funny novel about the fragile lines that divide vulnerability from self-protection, loyalty from betrayal, and about the tiny choices that can make or unmake a friendship, a marriage, a family.” 

—Carolyn Parkhurst, author of HARMONY and the New York Times bestseller THE DOGS OF BABEL

“I’m always looking for (and hardly ever finding) a book to lure me in, keep me from cleaning out the pantry, paying bills, writing to my aunt. But MEANTIME is exactly this. Katharine Noel brings onto the page characters so vibrant you almost want to step out of their way as they stumble through their sorrows, armed only with gallows humor. Noel understands a fundamental truth: that in fiction as in life, tragedy can brake for comedy, but comedy brakes for nothing.”

—Carol Anshaw, author of the New York Times bestseller CARRY THE ONE

“Noel is an expert at creating scenes and characters that feel undeniably real. In MEANTIME I was fully invested in the complex, funny, and unpredictable character Claire Hood --- her strange history, devastating present, and uncertain future. This is a novel with edge and heart, and I loved every exquisite sentence.” 

—Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of HOW TO PARTY WITH AN INFANT and the New York Times bestseller THE DESCENDANTS