Sandwich, Catherine Newman
Every now and then, I love a book so much that I don’t have the words to express what makes it so special. It happened last year with Catherine Newman’s We All Want Impossible Things, and it is happening again this year with Sandwich. How do you summarise a book that, within the span of several hundred pages, takes you through every human emotion possible? Events-wise, Sandwich is about a family on a week-long summer holiday in a house they rent every year. Feelings-wise, it’s so much more than that.
We tend to expect chaos and drama from the ‘family-in-one-place-for-an-extended-period-of-time’ plot, but what I’ve come to learn about Newman’s writing is that there will always be love above all else. And this is true in Sandwich, too, which is bursting at the seams with care and acceptance. The characters are concerned with each other’s wellbeing but know how to draw boundaries, and they truly have space in their lives for one another without having to directly express their feelings.
Catherine Newman has a way of talking about everyday life that makes it feel like an adventure, adorning each small moment with love. When a character lives with anxiety, the flip side of this is that being able to see into the beauty of life brings with it the expectation that it will all be taken away. This is the first novel I’ve read that discusses feelings like anticipatory grief, and I love that it’s mainly a heartwarming and witty book with genuinely funny moments, while also acting as an accurate portrayal of everyday anxiety that lingers in the background, only making itself known every now and then.
Sandwich is my biggest book recommendation of the summer. Please also keep in mind a significant bit of this book discusses difficult topics related to motherhood, including miscarriage and abortion, as well as the loss of loved ones.
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