A Hot, Fraught Cape Cod Family Drama

SANDWICH, by Catherine Newman

Occasionally a writer comes along who seems able to turn every domestic triumph and tear, every dinner concocted, co-sleep endured and I.P.A. swallowed (or not) — in other words, the ordinary stuff of first-world life — into material rife with wit, humor and soul-bearing openness.

Catherine Newman, self-described on her Substack as a “55-year-old white half-Jewish cis queer menopausal woman,” is that sort of writer. A long-married mother of two, she has written extensively — via memoirs, self-help books, blog posts and essays — about her children, her experience raising them and, of course, within that fertile milieu, herself. (She also wrote Real Simple’s etiquette column for 10 years, despite professing to “swear a lot” and not “know what an oyster fork is.”)

Her first novel for adults, the well-reviewed “We All Want Impossible Things,” centered on a middle-aged mother of two watching her best friend die of cancer (a situation Newman also lived through and wrote nonfiction about). Now comes her second mature novel, “Sandwich” —a slim, engrossing read that might be slotted into the “empty-nest” or “menopause” categories in a non-politically-correct but helpful bookstore.

The gist: A long-married couple, Nick and “Rocky” (Rachel), and their two 20-something children, Jamie and Willa, plus Jamie’s girlfriend, go on their annual vacation to Cape Cod. Meals are made, sunscreen applied, food dropped onto and retrieved from the sand. Sex is had and not had, pregnancies (past and present) discovered, miscarried, aborted, mourned and celebrated. Rocky’s parents visit. (The book’s title suggests Rocky’s position between generations, though she’s also constantly making sandwiches.) A female character vomits on Page 27, and, as with Chekhov’s famous gun, I thought, “You don’t put puking in an early chapter unless ….” In fact, this was the main plot hook for some time.

Rocky, who narrates, is neurotic, sentimental and slightly unhinged at 54. Alternately enraged, apologetic and overjoyed, sometimes all on one page, she cries, laughs and worries, and talks to and feeds her family. She notices, unbearably to her, that her parents are getting frailer, older. She harbors secrets that get revealed as the book unfolds.