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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?
I was really struck by how the characters in Wreck—Rocky’s elderly father in particular—really strive to understand each other and learn more about things, like queerness, that haven’t always been accepted. Is that a shift you’re seeing more of in real life?
I totally see it more now. I was once talking to a friend of mine about how she came out to her parents and how they were about it, and I asked her some question, and she was like, “Dude, this was the 1970s, nobody cared about my psyche.” And I just laughed so much because, oh, my God, it is so true. Nobody cared about our psyches and so, so much stuff flew under the radar. It was good in some ways—like, I was getting high in Central Park and nobody asked me questions. But there was also bad stuff, like our mental health or stuff that happened to us that we never felt like we could talk to anyone about. I just watched my own father correct himself to my queer daughter after he said “he or she” and add a “they,” and my daughter said, “Look at you go, Grandpa,” and he said, “I’m a lifelong learner.” I just died. I was like, wow, I’m living my perfect life with these two. My dad is 93 and committed to keeping his mind open, which is absolutely aspirational for me.
How do you feel about the term “domestic fiction” in general?
I definitely think of these novels as domestic fiction, but they’re not, you know, trad. Maybe that’s why people chafe against the term, because it seems like we want to represent women as being properly inside the home with their families and kids and taking care of everybody. To some extent, Wreck is a book about that; I mean, it’s about Rocky’s kind of compulsion to take care of everybody and the way she’s torn between having this robust life of her own and her really intense caregiving.
Is there anything you wish we saw more of when it comes to representations of the lives of women in middle age?
I mean, I had wished we talked more about menopause, and now I feel like we definitely are talking about menopause. One thing that I just keep thinking about is the way that I want choice politics to extend all the way and be the most robust version of themselves. I was just talking to a friend and told her that one of the great things for me about being in my mid-50s is that I no longer care about being decorative, and she said, “Well, I’m in my mid-50s and I still care about being decorative.” I was like, boom, choice politics. That’s great, and you can feel however you want. The goal is to feel like the full spectrum is available to you, and you get to pick, not that I have to keep being decorative or my value is challenged, or that she can’t continue to wear a full face of makeup and feel like a feminist. All of it is great; I just want us to get to pick.
Is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to about seeing Wreck connect with readers?
I mean, I’m such a freaking whore for comedy. I just want people to laugh, mostly, but I also want the thing I always want: I want people to feel less alone. That’s the holy grail for me as a writer, because as a reader, that is my favorite thing, where you’re like, ah, okay, this thing I thought was very particular to me is an experience I share with other people. Besides people laughing, that’s what I hope for. I also have a very particular hope that people who’ve had long and mysterious illnesses will feel that, in particular.
