Review of SANDWICH by Catherine Newman

 4 Stars

The narrator/protagonist of this novel is a woman in her fifties coming to terms with her changing body and her changing role as a mother.

Rocky, her husband Nick, and their grown children, Jamie and Willa, return to Cape Cod for a week for their annual summer vacation as they have done for two decades. As they slide into familiar routines, Rocky reminisces and examines how her life has changed. Secrets are revealed as are messy emotions like anger and shame.

There are a lot of flashbacks to Rocky’s earlier years as a mother; these flashbacks usually begin with sentences like “Jamie was four then, and Willa was not yet one.” She remembers being tired and overwhelmed and anxious about what could endanger her children. Of course, she also remembers the joy of being a mother, a happiness she feels again now that the family is all together once again. She is having difficulty adjusting to the idea that she and Nick are now empty nesters.

The stages of motherhood are an obvious theme. Given her close relationship with Jamie and Willa, it is obvious that Rocky is a successful mother. But there are instances of motherhood being rejected. I like how there are women at various stages of motherhood; if Rocky is in the middle, Jamie’s fiancée Maya is at the beginning and Rocky’s mother Alice is at the end.

Rocky’s life is also full of change because she is in the midst of menopause and she hates the changes it has brought to her body and emotional state. It is her observations about menopause that are the source of much of the humour in the book: “Menopause feels like a slow leak: thoughts leaking out of your head; flesh leaking out of your skin; fluid leaking out of your joints. You need a lube job, is how you feel. Bodywork. Whatever you need, it sounds like a mechanic might be required, since something is seriously amiss with your head gasket.” She bemoans her hot flashes, and “permanently trashed perineum” and atrophying vagina and her scalp “extruding a combination of twine, nothing, and fine-grit sandpaper.”

The title is perfect. Rocky is part of the sandwich generation “halfway in age between her young adult children and her elderly parents.” She worries about losing her children as they spread their wings but also her increasingly frail parents. The making of sandwiches is something Rocky enjoys; it seems to be a way for her to show her love for her family. She even customizes everyone’s sandwiches according to people’s wishes. Then, on the last day, the family opts to buy sandwiches from a deli instead of eating sandwiches she offers to make. This latter choice is a wonderful metaphor for how life and motherhood are constantly changing.

I enjoyed both the humorous and serious elements of this novel.