Sandwich

Pick it up: If you’re in the mood for a complicated beach read. If you are part of the sandwich generation - you will find a kindred spirit in Rocky.

The narrator Rocky (or Rachel), is a mother in her fifties, who is with her family on their annual summer vacation on Cape Cod, something they have been doing for two decades. Rocky is the "sandwich generation" – caught between her aging parents (who join them for part of the holiday, Rocky watching them constantly and closely for any signs of deterioration, riddled with thoughts of losing them) and her two young adult children Jamie and Willa. Jamie and Willa, in their early twenties, are intelligent, funny, and loving children. Rocky loves every moment she gets to be with them, aware that they are making their own lives now (Jamie’s long time girlfriend Maya is also with them). She has a loving husband Nick who is the calm and patient sort, and a great father.

The family stays at the same rental every year and the whole place - the house, the beach, the same old restaurants they go to -  is filled with memories for Rocky. She knows, as they are all together this week - in what feels to her like a moment suspended in time - that she has everything she could possibly want. 

And yet, this year feels a little different for Rocky. She is navigating the hormonal shifts of menopause, experiencing bouts of both rage and melancholy, that mostly find their way onto Nick. As the week progresses, she is triggered in to revisiting memories from past summers, thinking about the choices she made, the secrets she holds on to, and how she might move forward.

The novel is honest about what the experience of motherhood means in all its pain and messiness for women when it comes to their phsyical, as well as emotional, selves. How an abundance of love can also be intertwined with constant anxiety. About how we can have love and pain and fear and loss all tied up together all the time in our lives, and still find a way to be okay, to live.