A small beach town in Cape Cod. A family who has rented the same house there for decades, year after year. The middle-aged parents, daughter, son and son’s girlfriend all get along pretty well. These are the apparently peaceful circumstances in which Catherine Newman’s Sandwich is set, and yet, it is a book full of overwrought emotional intensity.
Most of this intensity comes from the main character, Rachel, who is called Rocky by her husband, friends and children. She is middle-aged, and going through menopause. Her menopausal symptoms are dramatic, but she discusses them endlessly with the other characters, who are arguably as bored as the readers.
“You don’t all have to look away because I’m having a hot flash!” I say. The four people I’m sitting with turn their faces back towards me. “It’s not embarrassing.” [..] “It’s the endocrine system,” I explain, because they need to understand this. “It’s not vaginal.”
“Oh god Mom!” Can you please not?” Willa grimaces.
I had some sympathy for Rocky’s suffering, but a few chapters in it became obvious that everything in Rocky’s life is over-the-top. This is partly due to her unspecified mental-health problems (it is mentioned that she and her daughter Willa are both on medications to ‘make them happy’). When it turns out that one of their bags had been left behind:
my veins are flooded with the lava that’s spewing out of my bad-mood volcano. If menopause was an actual substance, it would be spraying from my eyeballs, searing the word ugh across Nick’s cute face.
At some point my sympathy lessened; it just seemed like manufactured drama.
There are two major male characters. One is Rocky’s long-suffering husband Nick, who she treats with arbitrary cruelty and anger, but who is inexplicably devoted to her. Two major secrets (a pregnancy and an abortion) appear in the book; Rocky shares one secret with her son’s girlfriend and the other with her daughter, leaving her husband entirely ignorant until he overhears her. As with everything else, he takes this with relative equanimity.
“The pond really carries sound, as I know you know” is all he said.
The other man is her son, who is sensitive, evolved, progressive and inclusive, as saintly as his father. In case the reader doesn’t realize this, it is also pointed out explicitly.
Jamie is so aggressively mentally well, but also appealingly apologetic about it.
This perfection leaves the male characters rather bland. The daughter Willa, who is gay, is drawn as a one-note character whose only purpose is to point out every situation or phrase or sentence in which another character is less than politically correct.
“Thank you for inaccurately boysplaining that to me” [Willa says to a random child]
[Rocky:] “Willa, I have literally risked my life for women’s access to abortion.” [Willa:] “Trans men too”, she says. “And nonbinary people.”
There are pieces of good writing, but also many repetitions. Rocky is very very admiring (almost to a creepy level) of the physical bodies of her children at every age.
Maya, like Jamie and Willa and young people everywhere, is a perfect human specimen.[…] perfect nostrils […] perfect ears.
I kiss Willa’s perfect rosy empath cheek.
Willa, with her shoulders and cheekbones and her darkly shorn, perfectly shaped head. Jamie, with a manly shoulder along his lovely jaw, above his lovely lips.
Their perfect bodies! [..] the children rosy and perfect […]
A little of this goes a long way. Food, too, is frequently described as ‘perfect’. (fish, corn etc). Also heavily over-used is the word ‘happy’.
The title of the book implies that it concerns the “sandwich generation” — women who are simultaneously caring for elderly parents and young children. In fact, Rocky’s parents are quite independent even with their health problems, and her children are also independent adults even if they have some personal problems. So perhaps the title refers to the endless sandwiches (described in detail) that Rocky makes for lunches? That seems rather trite, but perhaps it is a metaphor for something.
This book had potential, but despite the endless advice to check privileges and suchlike, I found it rather tediously privileged, and with more than a hint of superior wokeness. Not much happened in Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, but it was a much better read.
Oh dear! I rather enjoyed this book! I didn’t realise it was overwrought. I thought it was for comic effect. I thought Rocky was playing the deliberately over the top character, but ultimately, because she is so secure of being beloved and having her place assured in her family’s affections. I enjoyed the food details – esp how everyone liked their sandwiches made differently, and I liked that ultimately, it was the protagonist’s privilege to fuss over her family, and for them to let her fuss, and that was their perfect understanding. I actually thought it was a good book because there was a lot of showing and not telling, that we see through Rocky’s lenses but actually, we the readers are given to see a lot more than that. Ultimately, it was a happy book. I read the title as meaning Rocky is safely sandwiched in her family. (Agree, her parents didn’t seem to need much help, so this is not really an example of being the sandwich generation.) Had to laugh at where you picked up how Rocky seems obsessed with the perfect bodies of her children. I have known women in real life, ex-act-ly like that. Obsessed! They can’t stop admiring their children’s perfect bodies, from babies to adulthood and are always watching and talking about it. Many times one told me – the real life woman – how much she wants to just bite her own children (not vampirically, just out of devouring love. Okay, yeah, you are right, it might be a tad creepy! But it is real, for sure, since I have known real life women just like that, so I found it well portrayed in the novel. I esp liked the nuanced relationship between Rocky and her husband.
Oh my! Now you have me rethinking my review 🙂