Catherine NewmanAnmeldelser

Sandwich by Catherine Newman is an emotional drama that spends one week in the life of a family on their annual summer vacation at Cape Cod. It is recommended.

Nick and Rocky (Rachel) and their two grown children, Jamie and Willa, always spend one week a summer at the same cottage. Maya, Jamie's girlfriend has joined them this year and Rocky's parents will also be stay with them for a few days. Rocky is menopausal, experiencing hot flashes, angry, and emotional in contrast to Nick, who is easygoing. Rocky narrates the novel which is in part details of what they will eat, comic episodes, reminiscing on past events and heartbreaking secrets, and her menopausal hot flashes and anger. She not only makes plenty of sandwiches for the family to take to the beach, she is now part of the sandwich generation between her aging parents and adult children.

The quality of the writing is good and includes details that create a picture of the setting. The narrative follows the present day vacation with alternating chapters reflecting back on highly emotional events in the past. The state of Rocky's emotions, which are rocky indeed, are also descriptively presented along with her relationship and interaction with her family. At times, however, the interaction between family members was entertaining as written, but seemed unbelievable and unrealistic.

Rocky is a character that I struggled with liking or even relating to on some level, which is essential to this novel because she is the narrator. The constant mention of hot flashes and menopause began to annoy me. She feels over-the-top emotions and anxiety seemingly all the time while being very much self-focused. Some of her thoughts and actions just struck me as off and unrealistic. I should be the target audience for this novel but it put me off more than once. Thanks to HarperCollins for providing me with an advance reader's copy via Edelweiss. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.
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I love what Catherine Newman did in We All Want Impossible Things — somehow making a book about dying excruciatingly funny — in Sandwich, she turns her impossibly hilarious prose towards marriage, motherhood, menopause, grown children, and beach houses, among other things. Rocky and her family return to the same rental in Sandwich, MA that they have vacationed in for more than 20 years and the week brings back memories both good and bad. If you need plot in your novels then Sandwich may not be for you, but if you want painfully funny commentary —and sometimes just the pain — of middle age, beach rentals, and parenting then grab a copy of Sandwich.½

Thank you to Goodreads, the author and the publisher for this ARC.

I'm not very original in what I read and this is one of those examples, family, beach, etc. But it is what it is and I enjoy these types of books so I read them. This one happens to be set in Cape Cod.

Rocky and Nick go for their usual week in the Summer to Cape Cod with their mid-20's children as they usually do and it's a laugh a minute with them bickering and reminiscing (especially Rocky) about when the kids were little here. She's definitely going through menopause when she said that Nick couldn't figure out that she never eats sweets for breakfast and yells at him (in the bakery no less) for not knowing this year after year. This book was so good and Nick and Rocky's kids were so mature. You don't see that in every family book and they all got along. Then at the end of their stay, her parents show up as always. They were a sweet couple too.

The cover is beautiful too.

Inspired by their great love of IKEA, and by one of their favorite books, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Frankie and Walter hatch a plan to stay overnight at an IKEA after a joint family trip. They convince Walter's mom Alice that they're having a sleepover at Frankie's house, and convince Frankie's parents they're at Walter's. They hide until closing, and then the world of IKEA is theirs. Frankie sees the experience not just as wish fulfilment, but as an opportunity to reawaken the old Water, whose father died of brain cancer. Frankie and Walter are best friends, and their families are very close, but even Frankie doesn't know the depth of sadness in their household. The two have a transformative night, but eventually cause enough damage (unintentionally) that they're stopped by compassionate security guard Shirley, who talks with them before calling their parents.

Quotes

The funny thing is this: people think that dorky geeks who read all the time are the kinds of kids who don't get into trouble. But they're wrong. We do. (first sentences)

But the thing is? I never feel strange with Walter. I mean, never when we're hanging out, just the two of us, obviously. But also never if he's even just in the room with me. He's like my own personal normalizer, and if he's in my class at school or at a party with me, or in a group of people, I can relax and just feel all right in the world.
"You're Frankie's knight in shining armor," my dad once said to Walter....
"I know," [Walter had] said seriously. "She's mine too." (72)

Sometimes I think that's kind of what stuff is like. You want it until you have it, and then it's like the light inside it goes out. (82)

That's what I was thinking about now....How rare it was to feel actually satisfied by things, however nice they were. (104)

"And all those things are gone, and where they were there are just these giant holes instead, and all you can do is kind of...fall into them and break your leg every five minutes." (Walter, 158)

Ash's lifelong best friend Edi is dying in a hospice near where she lives in Western Mass. Edi's husband and young son remain in Brooklyn, in accordance with Edi's wishes. Ash goes back and forth between the hospice (called Shapely) and her home (where she lives with her teenage daughter, Belle; older daughter Jules is at MIT, and husband Honey has moved out, but still makes frequent appearances). As Edi's death from ovarian cancer approaches, Edi has periods of lucidity, specific cravings, and vivid memories, and those around her experience the drawn-out loss with grief, compassion, and morbid humor.

See also: Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

Quotes

We held her while the biggest loss of her life - which was bigger than the loss of her actual life - sank into her like mercury. (26)

"I love you, but you want impossible things, Ash." (Honey, 65)

It's the anticipation I can't handle. Loss lurks around every corner, and how do we prepare? (67)

Edi's memory is like a backup hard drive for mine, and I have that same crashing, crushing feeling you have when the beach ball on your computer starts spinning. (84)

"What do you think happens after you die?"
...
"I believe there's some kind of energy....Maybe you turn into a kind of free-floating consciousness that surrounds the people you love so that you're kind of there with them still and the air they breathe is somehow made out of you....I guess I'm not sure what I think - besides that the people we lose stay with us somehow." (89)

"It's so frustrating that I'm stuck in this stupid, sick body," she says. "It seems so inessential, somehow, but then, there's really nowhere else for me to go." (Edi, 89)

If there's a metaphor for our friendship, it might be this. The blind faith. The absolute dependability. The love like a compass, its north always true. (102)

Everyone dies, and yet it's unendurable. There is so much love inside of us. How do we become worthy of it? And, then, where does it go? (150)

It's been so arduous, Edi's dying. It's like we've all been digging and digging, shoveling out a hole, and we can finally stop. Only now there's this hole here. (188)

It's the deep well of nothing where Edi should be, like if you poked a painful tooth with your tongue, only the tooth was gone, and you got sucked, tongue-first, into a black hole. I stash thoughts and experiences in my mental Edi file to talk to her about later, and then realize that they'll stay there forever. (203)½

I read this as a book club selection. The novel is about two lifelong BFFs. One is in hospice and the other grapples with the approaching loss, grief, and generally her bad life choices. I absolutely detested this book. The writing and editing were awful. The characters were flat and really more caricatures of some "type", all which were badly drawn. The dialogue was laughably fake. I didn't even cry even though the book was definitely manipulating the reader in that direction.

This is such a sweet look at parenting through various ages and stages. It's clear that Newman absolutely adores her children and her life. She admits she's incredibly blessed and has a life that is, on the whole, amazingly good. And perhaps that's why the essays felt a little dull to me. So much happiness, so much love, so much... routine, normal, parenting stuff.

I was expecting more practical advice, perhaps, about how to hold on to your identity while raising small children. I really enjoyed the prologue and epilogue, with their "it gets better" themes, but I wanted more of that. More recognition that "this sh*t is hard, yo!" and that it's perfectly okay to both want to hold them forever and run away to Fiji.

I also found some of the essays repetitive. At one point they all started to echo one another. Which wasn't terrible, but it added to the overall unremarkable impression I had of the book as a whole.

Quite a good representation of the process of dying and the impact on the relationship between the dying person and her life-long friend. The living friend's behaviour was perhaps a little too far off 'normal' to be believable and the ending spoilt the story somewhat. Ninety per cent of the story was good and engaging, with great narrating of the audiobook version.

Sad and funny

The title of our version is actually "How To Be a Mensch."

Amazing book on hospice families and dying. This is a book about friends and family.

The best I can do here is give the author some credit for taking on a challenging task: finding humour in terminal illness. For me, though, this was an epic failure. After reading three short chapters, I could not bear these characters; I didn’t find the situation credible; and the forced humour just grated. I loathed this book and was grateful it could so easily be returned to the library. Catherine Newman is a writer whose work I am fully committed to avoiding.

What everyone says about We All Want Impossible Things is true — somehow author Catherine Newman has written a laugh-out-loud funny book about dying. Ash’s best friend Edi is dying, and they decide to go to the hospice near Ash’s house in Massachusetts to keep Edi’s young son away from the trauma. Newman captures all of Ash’s craziness, love, and compassion along with a kaleidoscope of characters as they wait for Edi to pass. Based on a true story, Impossible Things feels real as Newman finds the humor and sadness and all the messiness.

Hard to classify this book-- shared experiences, growing up together, family, love life, loss, and sharing that final journey through terminal illness. Could be really depressing, but comes off optimistic. My earliest friend died in 2018 and I was able to walk part of the path with her. My other childhood friend and I are still in touch but don't share our lives the way we used to, which makes me a little sad, but am grateful I have solid family support. 2023 read.½

I'm still thinking about this book...more later.

This is a strange little book. One part grief, one part midlife crisis & one part celebration of life’s small moments. At first I wasn’t a fan. Ash is helping her friend Edi through hospice care & seems so unmoored and selfish. But the farther I got into the book the more I connected with it. We all deal with loss in very different ways. It’s easy for one person to hold everyone they love tighter and for another to wonder what they’ve done with their life and toss it all to the wind.

It’s certainly not a perfect read and it’s full of irksome moments, but I was left with a feeling of connection rather than frustration. I hated the overall arching hopelessness of the book though.

"I felt myself fill with fury like I was a bucket under a tap."

"A worldwide crescendo of grief, sustained day after day, and only one tiny note of it is mine."½

Terminal illness and loss in early middle age is portrayed with incredible humor and pathos in this outstanding short novel, which seems to be based on a true event. When Edi, first and current best friend to Ash, is stricken with ovarian cancer, everything about their past and their missing future rises to the surface in Edi's final days at a hospice that seems like a truly worthy last waystation. Ash is self-centered (to the point that Edi must remind her not to make herself the subject of the upcoming eulogy) and reacts to the pending loss of her BFF by throwing her husband overboard and desperately indulging in meaningless trysts, which Edi defines as "taking advantage of people with no boundaries". As selfish as she is, Ash glows as Edi fades, as do all the friends and family who provide loving tenderness in Edi's last difficult days. The combination of Ash's perverse thoughts and actions, filled with silliness and pain, with Edi's slide towards the unknown make this an exemplary read for anyone who has suffered a horrendous loss, and anyone who is facing the end of their own life. It’s almost a primer on how to do death right.

Quote: "She's super wholesome. She probably makes her own kombucha! Okay, that's a bad example. I actually make my own kombucha."

A raw yet often humorous story about grieving and dying.

The only good thing about this was the food descriptions. This was so freaking boring. This isn't darkly comedic at all. Everyone's a cardboard cutout and collection of tropes in human form. I wanted to see how death was handled, so I kept reading. It was bland and nearly nothing. The funeral was a waste of pages. This book was short, but felt so long. I have no idea what book I'd recommend in its place, despite reading actual cancer memoirs a few years ago. This book tried hard to be a memoir, and I can't think of a similar book off the top of my head. Skipping this will save time, if not brain cells.

We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman is one of those books that fits the description: I laughed, I cried.

The basic premise isn't particularly unusual, an old friend supporting and sharing another friend's last time on Earth. That is where anything usual about this book ends. Newman captures the moments that can make a time like this heartbreaking as well as life-affirming.

Like many of us who have served as complete or partial caregiver to a friend or family member who is dying, time is often the most important and the most difficult topic in conversation. What I mean by that is you're not sure whether to mention anything in your own future, or anything from your shared past, and when mentioning something in the present it can seem almost trite if you compare it to what the present looks like to your friend. That said, those are the things most of the people I have sat with want to talk about. Not endlessly, but in such a way that they feel engaged with the world around them and not separated from it. That is what, for me, propelled this story from moment to moment.

From memories they share to what is happening in Ash's present, they both find room to laugh and cry. From those emotions come, I think, the ability to place things in perspective, however difficult that may be. As readers, we are privileged to be invited along, and more than likely we thought about things in our own lives. I know I did. So I think at least some of the laughing and crying was along with the people I have spent time with as they were dying. And yes, I even spoke to a couple of them while reading (no, they didn't answer me back, at least not verbally. Though I felt lighter in my chest after sharing with them.)

I would highly recommend this to anyone who loves a well-written story that touches the heart. I also think most people who have experienced something similar to what Ash did will find this rewarding. Maybe a few will find it too difficult, but most will find it cathartic even through the pain.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

I received an advance ebook via Netgalley.

What Can I Say? is a full-color graphical book for middle graders, providing basic guidance on social interactions and dilemmas in a way that is progressive and fully inclusive. The attitude of the book is stated forthrightly at the beginning: "Learning how to be more kind, gracious, expressive, compassionate, responsible, respectful, and authentic in your interactions is going to make the world a better place, filled with happier people. Plus, it's going to help you yourself in a million ways." There's also no pressure to do things one right way. "Normal is not even a thing, and everyone doesn't have to be the same kind of person." As the parent of an autistic teenager, I also appreciated the brief mention that readers might be autistic or shy or have social anxiety.

The book is divided into numerous fast-to-read chapters: How to meet, greet, and part; how to have a conversation; how to get along with people; how to deal with hard things; how to be in a romantic relationship (or not); how to be supportive; how to be an ally; how to care for your community. The book is current and helpful by mentioning that some readers or their friends might identify as nonbinary or gay, and how to handle things like learning pronouns, and how to stand up for causes that are right. The illustrations throughout are such a joy, and do include kids who are gay and even doing very contemporary things like talking by video chat. Some especially awkward situations are addressed, too, like how to speak up politely if a relative is making racist jokes. These are things kids have to deal with every day and often feel so alone.

This is the kind of book that will save lives by letting kids know that they are seen, that they matter, that their voices deserve to be heard.

A "how to" book of sorts, aimed at kids aged 9-13 or so, covering a wide list of useful life skills (65.), ranging from good manners and responsibility to cleaning, caring, cooking, etc. The writing is light, with a healthy interspersion of humor and colorful illustrations. Sadly, people of all ages could learn from it but won't.

"How to Be a Person" by Catherine Newman should be on the must read list for every tween and/or teen. I know a few adults that could even benefit from some of the tips in this book as well. This is a fun guide book that tackles important topics in a light-hearted way. From teaching readers how to fold t-shirts and sheets to how to cook simple meals, this "how to guide" has it all. This would be wonderful addition to any public library.

How to Be a Person by Catherine Newman is such a gem!! I requested this book because we have been talking with our 9-year-old about basic yet important life tasks lately. As parents, we are quickly realizing how many things we will be guiding our kids through during the next stage of parenting life with tweens and teens..and it can feel a little daunting!

I love that these simple yet important life skills. are covered in a simple and easy to consume manner. This book is filled with tips and tricks and has a perfect balance of information and humor. I found it was an enjoyable read and our son found that the writing was accessible and relatable.

How to Be a Person covers a wide array of topics like how to take care of houseplants, implement a money management system, create a simple and balanced meal or write a condolence card. I can't wait to add a copy of this book to our home library, I know it will come in handy for years to come.