Breakaway Books

Authored by Catherine Newman; Published June 2024; Fiction

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I wasn’t sure that I should put Sandwich on my TBR list. Looking at the premise of the novel, it seems like it’s for a slightly older woman, looking back on her life with both contentedness and regret. But, reading it now, I can’t help but be inspired to enjoy every moment, peaceful and chaotic, as I live it, precisely to avoid looking back with regret.

Sandwich details a week-long vacation that Rocky and her family take every year on Cape Cod—this particular year, she spends it with her husband, two adult children, one of their partners, and her own parents. I loved how it showed both the awkwardness and the true joy of parenting adult children, how weird and amazing for Rocky to see her kids acting as functional adults. Interspersed throughout the novel are episodes describing the horrors of menopause, which, frankly, should be more widely known.

Much of the development in the book center on reproductive choices: whether to terminate a pregnancy, when to try to get pregnant. Rocky’s daughter, Willa, at one point admonishes her mother about regretting an abortion, claiming that expressing such an emotion only feeds the religious right. This stands as a counterpoint to the rest of the novel, which portrays in detail just how complex these decisions can be, even for married couples who want children. It was refreshing to read a book that just sits with that complexity, rather than coming up with an answer. As it wrestled with these questions, the novel shed light on Rocky’s marriage with Nick, whose lack of interest in emotion frustrates her to no end, and with whom she struggles to share her feelings.

The passages on pregnancy can be painful to read, and are artfully separated with comical anecdotes about how awful vacations with little children can be. It was a masterful balance between humor and poignancy, and if I had one quarrel with the novel, it was that Rocky seemed to be depicted at times as a type of nosy villain with little basis in fact, and I wish there had been more sympathy for her. But, even that seems to be true to the reality of parenting, of how unfairly children view their parents at times. 

Sandwich rushes quickly by—just like the annual beach week that it portrays. It’s full of the happy sadness of nostalgia, so it is far from perfect for every mood, but well worth a read.