A novel in which nothing very much happens but still feels detailed, heartfelt and full of life.
Plot in a Nutshell
Rocky is middle-aged, self-aware, and almost exhaustingly present. Over the course of a single week, she narrates the family holiday she and her husband take each year to Cape Cod. This year their adult children and her ageing parents in tow. Nothing very much happens and I think that was kind of the point.
Thoughts
Newman has done something unusual but I think impressive: she has written an almost plotless novel around a protagonist who is difficult to like. As a book it probably shouldn’t work, but somehow it is not only readable but actually quite moving.
Rocky is a LOT. She shares virtually every thought she has in real time, circles the same anxieties repeatedly, and could very reasonably be described as somewhere between annoying and narcissistic. I am not entirely sure I would want to be her friend.
And yet I found myself nodding along to more of her observations than I might want to admit. Much of the credit here belongs to her voice and the richness of the relationships painted. She is painted kindly and without judgement such that her excesses become, if never endearing, then certainly forgivable. Her daughter Willa’s quiet, generous consideration to her mother’s emotional state is one of the s loveliest touches. The love Willa shows says as much about Rocky as anything Rocky says about herself.
The novel’s premise, the idea of Rocky as a sandwich generation creates what plot or structure there is. She adores her now adult children and feels thrilled to have them back with her. Yet she openly reflects on the drudgery, exhaustion and pain of motherhood in their early years. She acknowledges she is lucky to be in this sandwich generation, her parents join them for some of the trip and she gets to see and learn new things about them even as she worries about their health and all the challenges that come with aging. Her relationship with her husband is interesting, she values him and what they have created together whilst still acknowledging the loneliness that can come with sharing your life with someone so incredibly different to yourself.
The idea of being in this generation is told predominantly through her reflections on her own body and specifically her reproductive system. Pregnancy, child loss and the menopause loom large here. I often find female experience being defined only be reproductive organs frustrating but here it worked for me. There is a relentlessness about how time moves forward for women. It felt very real, and more relatable than I entirely expected. A caveat I am now in my forties. I suspect this novel would have frightened me ten years ago. Now I recognise Rocky’s pre-emptive grief and rage rather too well.
Cape Cod is the centre of the novel but almost feels anonymous. Rather than a place those who know will recognise it is instead more of an idea. It’s an ‘any beach’ but is absolutely a novel of place. The story and experiences would not unfold back in real life. The family traditions, the same house, the inevitability of getting to the beach at the same time, the same restaurants offers an interesting counterpoint to the passage of time at the heart of the book. Families are often held together by traditions that seem foreign to others and this same and familiar backdrop brought that into stark relief. I loved the idea that Willa wrote her college application about the layers of memory in the swimming ponds. This slightly knowing nostalgia tints the pages as such as the golden sunlight on the beautiful cover of my copy.
There is a structural wobble near the end, Rocky’s “big secret” is a reveal that feels somewhat lacking. What works far better is Rocky’s remembering of it: raw, unguarded, and painful. When the moment is finally addressed directly in conversation, Rocky seems almost heartless in a way that felt out of step with everything the novel had built. It is a small complaint overall.
Sandwich is funny laugh-out-loud funny in places, and quietly tearful in others, sometimes within the same paragraph. It is a book about grief and love. It’s also the particular exhaustion of being a woman who feels everything very deeply. Most of all I think it will speak to those of us in this era of life.