SANDWICH (2024)
By Catherine Newman
Harper, 226 pages.
★★★
Sandwich is the most gynocentric novel I’ve read in years. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this work from Catherine Newman, but sometimes it’s hard book for males to grasp. The novel’s central character, Rachel (aka/ Rocky) dwells on subjects such as childbirth, menopause, oral sex, her vagina, sagging breasts, and how much she misses pregnancy. Lest you think me insensitive, Sandwich is also very funny, touching, and poignant. Plus, Rocky is seriously neurotic, has few filters, and is blissfully unaware of how others within hearing range might squirm over her topics of conversation. Besides, ladies, how would you feel about a novel that dwelt upon urinary tract infections, distended testicles, varicose veins, sexual dysfunction, “war” stories, and passing gas? Thought so!
For those who don’t live in New England, Sandwich is also a town on Cape Cod. If you think of Cape Cod as the flexing arm extending into the ocean, Sandwich is located atop the muscle after you cross the Sagamore Bridge onto the Cape. It’s where Rocky and her husband Nick have vacationed every summer for twenty years–always in the same cottage. Nick is the one who should bear the nickname Rocky, as he’s loyal, steady, handy, and as patient as Rachel is manic. He always listens, though he suspects he only understands about 65% of what Rocky says. We readers think he might be overestimating! They have two wonderful children, twenty-year-old Willa and her older brother Jamie. Both have flown the proverbial coop and Jamie arrives with his serious girlfriend Maya, though he and Willa often speak like a bonded pair despite the fact that Willa identifies as a lesbian and a vegetarian, though she eats seafood. Because. The Cape!
Rocky and Nick are in their fifties, though you can be excused for thinking of them as older and refugees from Woodstock. They are incredibly laidback, not because their kids are grown, but because that’s just the way there were and are. One example of this is Rocky’s relief that her daughter is gay so she doesn’t have to worry about her getting pregnant. Or, at least he was relieved until Nick reminded her that lesbians can have children by choice! But Rocky always finds things to fret over, including worrying that her daughter might be menstruating in an ocean where sharks are sometimes present!
Rocky is a classic born-to-be-a-mom type and Nick has come to accept that he’ll always be number three to Jamie and Willa. We get a no-topics-barred look at family dynamics during a week at the beach. Even Grandma and Grandpa get into the act for a few days. Newman has a true gift for turning annoying moments into comedy. The first thing that happens when they enter their modest (and in need of upgrades) vacation house is that the toilet overflows. When Willa complains of the smell, Nick yells out that he’s “knee-deep in sewage.” Rocky insists that’s not true, but because Willa is a “Daddy’s girl” she’s more inclined to believe him! The fact that Maya adores Jamie and his entire family doesn’t leave much room for an outbreak of elegance. And who has visited the Cape that can’t relate to this visit to the local bakery? “Forty minutes later, we are walking back to the cottage with two lattes, four chocolate croissants, one scone, three baguettes, and a receipt for sixty-five dollars.”
More serious issues are discussed–abortion, feminism, anxiety, therapy, politics, still birth, grandpa’s dementia–but mostly we get Rocky’s memories of past trips to the Cape, Rocky’s worried thoughts, and the joy of people reveling in one another’s company. If laughter is the best therapy, Rocky’s neuroses don’t have a chance! When Jamie discovers toasted almond bars in the freezer left behind by the previous resident. Rocky has a “bad feeling” about eating any, but Jamie wins the day by a four-to-one vote: “… you feel like maybe the people who stayed here last week… [are] playing the long game of booking this place last October so that they could plant a poisoned ice-cream novelty and kill us.” Leave to Nick to remember a time when they were younger and Rocky baked a cake in a cat litter pan! As they prepare to leave and muse over their favorite things, Rocky thinks: “…the fact of us together and alive. The kids… are so grown! So young. Mine and not mine, as ever they have been. Maybe my grief is love imploding. Or maybe it’s love expanding.”
Rob Weir
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