Sandwich

Much of the novel unfolds in the form of Rocky’s inner monologues, and she repeatedly returns to the same memories. Nostalgia and an increased awareness of the passage of time become an important thematic focal point, further grounding the novel within the author’s broader oeuvre: Newman explores myriad aspects of parenting and family life in her writing, and she’s particularly attuned to the experiences of women as they age. Sandwich explores nostalgia and the passage of time through Rocky’s often achingly wistful recollections of her children when they were young and through the role that the cottage itself plays in sparking these memories, but it also engages with the idea of nostalgia as an unreliable narrator: Rocky ultimately realizes that many of the happy memories she has were more complex than she initially recalls.

Rocky has always been an emotionally invested parent, and part of her nostalgia for her children’s early years is rooted in how much she came to self-identify as a caretaker. “Mother” became the most important aspect of her identity, and even as her children enter adulthood, she still thinks of herself primarily within the context of her nuclear family. She adores her children and often reflects on the earliest manifestations of their adult identities. The cottage itself and the surrounding Cape Cod setting become key parts of this nostalgia for Rocky as she can look at a particular place (like the cottage’s kitchen or living room or the neighboring beach and tide pool) and recall her children in those places at multiple ages. She characterizes her grown children as “Matryoshka dolls” (nested Russian dolls) partly because when she looks at them, she sees a series of their past selves nested inside who they are as adults. She can picture Willa as a toddler, an older child, and a teen standing in the same spot in the cottage, and the cottage thus becomes a symbol of how families change over time. At the swimsuit shop, Rocky is overcome with one of these memories and thinks to herself, “I am suddenly remembering buying a suit here twenty years ago, when Jamie was three and I was very pregnant with Willa” (14).

Nevertheless, Rocky admits to herself that nostalgia can be unreliable. Reflecting on children at various ages, she realizes that although she idealizes Willa and Jamie as toddlers, young kids can be difficult to manage. As they age, life gets easier: “Despite the cheerful photographs and tearful nostalgia,” she thinks to herself, “you probably spent the entire week discouraging a furiously determined someone from biting into a stick of butter” (44). Nick, too, is a fraught figure within Rocky’s nostalgic reminiscing. As difficult as she found life with toddlers, she remembers Nick “sailing through” it, largely because he left much of the parenting to her. Their “idyllic” family memories often belie how exhausted and resentful Rocky felt in the moment. Her nostalgia has a darker tinge at times because much of her reflection concerns memories of her pregnancy loss and abortion: “The summer that Jamie was four and Willa was not yet one” becomes a refrain within the novel (175), referring to the summer she got pregnant and then lost it. It isn’t necessarily nostalgia that Rocky feels for these tragedies but an awareness that the passage of two entire decades hasn’t dulled the pain of losing two children.