Fiftysomething mother and writer Rocky, the protagonist of Catherine Newman’s 2024 novel Sandwich and its new sequel, Wreck (out on Tuesday from HarperCollins), would likely laugh at my use of an ancient Gregorian chant to summarize her life philosophy. But in Sandwich and Wreck’s skillful fusing of the worst parts of life (infertility, wrongful death, chronic illness) with its sweetest bits (family life, friendship, and food), I couldn’t help thinking of the phrase: “In the midst of life we are in death.”
Newman’s novels stew in that truth—especially Wreck, which sees Rocky battle a mysterious skin condition while fretting over the details of one of her children’s peers’ sudden death—yet they manage to feel rollicking and wholly alive all the same. Watching Rocky alternately hold close and despair over her longtime marriage to her husband, Nick, and mother her two children with sensitivity, ardent love, and all the occasional missteps you’d expect from any parent, is a sorely needed reminder that no relationship on Earth is all one thing.
This week, Vogue spoke to Newman about the darkness and the light of Wreck.
Vogue: How does it feel to be getting readers caught up with Rocky under these new, intense circumstances?
Catherine Newman: Well, it’s another fairly quiet domestic story. I keep not really having a good elevator pitch for it, because nothing really happens, even though there’s this somewhat internal drama about health and about Rocky’s ongoing fear that the people she loves are going to die, which is, of course, true. Not to be ridiculous about it, but in fact, everybody she loves is going to die eventually! I feel like if you liked Rocky in Sandwich, you’ll like her in Wreck, and if you didn’t like her in Sandwich, you’re not going to like her any more in Wreck. [Laughs.]
Your books never shy away from serious topics, but they’re rounded out so nicely by the sweetness of family life. How do you find that balance?
Thank you, first of all! I think that is the balance that I’m trying to strike in real life all the time, to be totally honest. You can’t wait for everything to be good before you turn yourself over to the project of enjoying everybody. It’s never going to happen. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. Everything is precarious all the time—but obviously less so for me than for so many people in the world. So I think the book reflects that as a worldview that I’m cultivating in myself. It’s the sort of grotesquely obvious Zen thing, but there’s only this, you know?
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