Books: Family angst, a synagogue murder and being alone

Sandwich - Catherine Newman (Penguin) family humour

Rachel, aka Rocky, is a woman in her fifties. “She is halfway in age between her adult children and her elderly parents. She is long married to a beautiful man who understands between twenty and sixty-five percent of everything she says.” We learn all of this in the prologue before the story gets going, with Rocky herself as the narrator.

Catherine Newman has set all the action of her novel Sandwich during one week at the slightly run-down but comfortable Cape Cod beach house in Massachusetts where Rocky’s family has vacationed for the past 20 years. It has been the setting of so many treasured memories of her children growing up, of favourite swim spots, local haunts and big cook-ups.

This trip is special. Rocky’s daughter Willa, son Jamie and his girlfriend Maya are there. They’ll be joined by Rocky’s parents. The kids are embarking on lives of their own so who knows how much longer they’ll tag along on family holidays? And her parents won’t be around forever either. Could this be their last golden summer together? 

Rocky has to navigate the family relationships and her changing role within them. All this while facing down menopause, which is “KILLING ME,” she admits. She is frank, fearless and funny about the ravages that time is wreaking on her body. “How am I a feminist, an advocate for reproductive rights, Our Bodies Ourselves, hear me roar, blah blah, and I am only just now learning about vaginal atrophy?” 

Newman’s story is about being both the parent and the child, the meat in the generational sandwich, told lovingly with wisdom and humour. You get a sense of this in her dedication: “This one is for my parents, whom I love so immoderately.”