Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsTouching, nostalgic, funny. I LOVE this book so hard!
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2024
I want to read everything she writes. She gets us. There is a nuance to these characters, a depth of emotion so unbelievably real, you can see yourself, you’ll nod your head, laugh along, feel the warmth and intimacy as if you're a member of the family. A mother looking longingly at her grown children, still hanging on their every word, trying to speak their slang, she wants to hug them until they beg to be let go or when she knows she’s annoying them so much yet she can’t stop herself and being smack in the middle of the ridiculously unfair mind and body-altering menopausal symptoms, she can’t help but look back on events that altered her, reflect on her marriage, and other relationships right under her nose, and wonder.
It's Rocky’s favorite week of the year. She loves every minute of these precious days she gets to spend with her husband, son, daughter, and elderly parents in their tiny rental cottage on Cape Cod. The one they’ve been coming back to year after year. Easygoing Nick, Jamie, who loves to cook, brought his sweet and adoring girlfriend Maya, whom the family loves, chatty, opinionated Willa cringes when Rocky makes inappropriate comments, asks invasive questions but loves her, nonetheless. Secrets are revealed that change the trajectory of how Rocky looks at the past and thinks about the future. It’s board games, conversations with their cat, lazy days at the beach, counting the minutes until they can get to the clam shack.
Just wait for the custom sandwich orders. While they give the book its title, a sandwich here is a metaphor for a place in time, which Rocky marks by telling us how old her kids were at key moments, rather than how old she was. Holding on to her kids as babies, when they depended on her, now the letting go, her nest is empty, a new phase has begun, menopause has kicked in, her parents are aging. Her time was not her own though every moment with her precious family brings her joy, she needs to process what she’s going through. Reminiscent of Nora Ephron, who used the planning, preparation and enjoyment of food to show pleasure and love, Newman adeptly brings us to the table with exquisite yet simple summer meals of lobster, corn on the cob, tomato salad, and what’s in between those made-to-order sandwiches. Now, that’s love. And drama.