For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family's yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds: emotional, marital, and thanks to the cottage's ancient plumbing, septic too. This year's vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past, except, perhaps, for Rocky's hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing—her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers. It's one precious week: everything is in balance; everything is in flux. And when Rocky comes face to face with her family's history and future, she is forced to accept that she can no longer hide her secrets from the people she loves.
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 ... Newman...is that sort of writer ... Slim, engrossing ... Impassioned, crackling, vividly detailed writing ... A prominent theme is the passing of time: the loss of youth; the replacement of bodily desire, function and pleasure with the security and privilege, the joy and miracle, of long-term life and love ... Sweet, savory, tenderhearted.
Newman elegantly segues from Nora Ephron-like comic passages like that one to elegy. To return to the same place every summer, after all, is to be periodically brought up short by the passage of time ... Sandwich is my idea of the perfect summer novel: shimmering and substantive. One more aspect of Newman’s book deserves highlighting: like many other recent novels by best-selling female authors — I’m thinking of Jennifer Weiner, Ann Patchett and Megan Abbott — Newman introduces a storyline here about abortion. She writes about that contested subject — and the emotions it engenders — in a way that I’ve never encountered in fiction before.
The great lines and witty observations never stop ... The abundance of love flourishing in Rocky’s family is refreshing and inspiring, but Newman is not afraid to go to the dark side of it.
