BookTowne Welcomes Catherine Newman Author of Sandwich @ BookTowne

Catherine Newman will be in convesation with Alice Elliott Dark, author most recently of Fellowship Point.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The humor and poignancy of the everyday collide in Catherine Newman’s delightful second novel, SANDWICH (Harper; June 18, 2024), which Ann Patchett calls “joy in book form.” With the heartbreaking hilariousness that marked her bestselling debut novel, We All Want Impossible Things, her memoirs Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness, and countless columns and articles, Newman explores the inevitable changes that time heaps on both body and soul, altering our intimate relationships even while strengthening our love.

As three generations of a family descend on the Cape Cod summer cottage they have rented for more than twenty years, mom Rocky—smacked by the mood swings of menopause—feels the pressure of being sandwiched between her newly adult kids and her rapidly aging parents. But she loves this annual week away with the family like no other part of the year, and she’s not going to allow a little hormonal imbalance to get the better of her. True, her twenty-something kids have expectations of their own, her parents face challenges, and the wider world seems to have a whole new set of rules, but a little clam chowder goes a long way toward making things right. A chain of events, though, transports Rocky emotionally into the past—to a handful of long-ago summers percolating with secrets she has kept hidden for too long.

“SANDWICH seems like it’s a book about a three-generation family beach vacation on Cape Cod, and it is,” Newman says, “but it is also a book about secrets, and the joys and menopausal havoc of midlife. I also wanted to write about the profound pleasure of parenting grown kids, even as it is tinged with an almost unbearable kind of nostalgia. I wanted to write about the deep and evolving love for one's aging parents. Also, cats. The beach and sky. Seafood.”

“SANDWICH reminds me of Laurie Colwin’s Happy All the Time,” says Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man and Welcome Home, Stranger. “Newman shares Colwin’s ability to write about intertwined happiness and heartbreak (as well as her passion for food). I found myself snorting out loud with laughter, the wheezing kind, then all at once, deeply moved…. It’s a total delight.”

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

​Catherine Newman is the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, the kids’ craft book Stitch Camp, the best-selling how-to books for kids How to Be a Person and What Can I Say?, the novel We All Want Impossible Things, and the forthcoming novel Sandwich (Harper 2024). She has been a regular contributor to the New York Times, Real Simple, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cup of Jo, and many other publications. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper's, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, and has been translated into many languages. "In the Gloaming," a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program.