Reviews with content warning for Blood - Sandwich

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

12 reviews

grumpyreading's review against another edition

emotional funny inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

📚 Review: Holy fuck. This book was absolutely stunning. By page 37, I had cried and laughed out loud multiple times, and had written down 7 quotes and had taken multiple photos of full pages of beautiful writing. I literally cried and laughed out loud through this entire book, and was an absolute mess at the end. In the middle of the night after finishing it, I woke up and thought about it and cried. This book explores themes of grief and loss and the anticipation of these, and what it means to love and the hurt that comes with it. It also talks about what it means to be a parent, and to love your children as they grow. Though I’m not a parent, I absolutely sobbed at this, and about thinking about my mom (how dare I move out and grow up, honestly), and how much love can hurt. The way she used sandwiches to talk about the ways in which Rocky knows her family members so deeply - how different they are, how similar, what their preferences say about who they are - was so beautiful. Something so mundane that drew on the theme of the emotional work many mothers do in tending to their families was so central to this book. The writing was STUNNING, and I loved this book. Catherine Newman writes “It’s just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subtlety, its decency and dailiness.”, and I feel like that’s what this book was. That, and so much more.

There are so many beautiful quotes I wrote down while reading - I’m including them below.

💫 Rating: 6/5. This very quickly became one of my favourite books of all time.

QUOTES:

“It’s so crushingly beautiful, being human,” the mother sighs, and the daughter rolls her eyes and says, “But also so terrible and ridiculous.”

“What does loss look like, in your body? Where is it? It feels like an air bubble stuck in your psyche. It feels like peering down into a deep hole. The vertigo of that. The potential for obliteration. It’s in your stomach. Your spleen. Or it’s just your heart losing its mind.”

“It’s too beautiful to bear — and too much to be worthy of.”

“What, exactly, are we doing here? Why do we love everyone so recklessly and then break our own hearts? And they don’t even break. They just swell, impossibly, with more love.”

“It’s almost painful, the way little children just trustingly hold out their hearts for you to look at - the way they haven’t learned yet how to conceal what matters to them, even if it’s just chewing gum or a plush dolphin or plastic binoculars.”

“Grief bright in the periphery, like a light flashing just out of view.” - literally cried immediately when I read this line

“There is so much more I want to ask him. About the texture of grief in the household of his childhood.”

“But grief was like a silver locket with two faces in it. I didn’t know what the faces looked like, but it was heavy around my neck, and I never took it off.”

“I would pick this life too, I know. I’d even pick the way that pain has burnished me to brightness. The pain itself, though? I imagine I’d give it up if I could.”

“I’ve heard grief described as love with nowhere to go. To be honest, though, I sometimes feel like love is that already.”

“Maybe grief is love imploding. Or maybe it’s love expanding. I don’t know. I just know you can’t create loss to preempt loss because it doesn’t work that way. So you might as well love as much as you can. And as recklessly. Like it’s your last resort, because it is.”

“And we’ll be as young and as whole as we’re ever going to be.”

“A transition is so much gentler than an ending.”

“… and what she told me was that I didn’t need to draw so many conclusions, to make so many decisions. That I could just live with all the different parts of life as they were. That I could be happy even though nothing would ever be perfect.”

“It’s just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subtlety, its decency and dailiness.”

“Imagine trying to make that color yellow just from the soil and sunlight,” Willa said. She was leaning against my father, who was smiling and frowning and dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. “Like, if someone was like, here’s a bowl of dirt. Make two perfect shades of the brightest yellow you ever saw! You totally couldn’t do it.” We agreed that this was true. “So what is that? I mean, I know it’s nature. Photosynthesis. Adaptation. But is it magic too?” We thought that maybe it was.

Content Warnings

gabbysnieto's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Sandwich isn't written like a diary, but it most certainly reads like one. Rocky's character is so three-dimensional it hurts, and being privy to her inner thoughts felt like being inside my mother's head. Catherine Newman is exceptional at detailing the conflicts and deep, deep love of motherhood, and I'm so glad to have read something so raw and real. So many people like to gloss over how hard being a parent is, but Newman isn't afraid to peel back the nuanced layers.

I do have a reason behind rating this book 4.25 though. It's clear here that Rocky is a deeply flawed character, but she seems to spend more time making excuses for her behavior than apologizing to her family for her narcissistic tendencies. The epilogue also felt too wrapped up in a bow for me to really connect with it.

Read this if:
-you want to understand your mother
-you love family dynamics more than fast-paced plots
-you need a good beach read
-you aren't afraid to cry a little

Content Warnings

sarahbsews's review against another edition

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emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

vireogirl's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

She has a knack for saying things the rest of us might think but don't say. I laughed several times.

Content Warnings

afrenette's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

theyellowbrickreader's review against another edition

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reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

gwenswoons's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

One of my favorites ever ever. The words, the dialogue, the people — all of it is so heart-stopping, so beautiful, so human and poetic and precious, even as it makes you laugh wildly as you read. The details of the setting, the characters’ histories, the nuances of how they interact — truly, I’ve never read another book with more wondrous and personal shading, layers, and magic. I loved this. I will read it again, and I will go back and read Catherine Newman’s first book, her essays, her non-fiction, and then every word she writes forever.

Content Warnings

jeannine_'s review against another edition

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2.0

I did not like this book at all. And I’ve read the author previously and liked her work!

I thought I was going to get a multigenerational look from the mom’s point of view in a breezy lighthearted “beach read” that wasn’t a romance. This excited me.

This was nothing of the sort.

The main character, the mom, who goes by Rocky, is a narcissist. She’s a shitty wife and does not consider her husbands feelings or perspective over and over again. It’s all about her. Unfortunately; he allows this and ultimately excuses it. And she has a weird relationship with her daughter. Who goes skinny dipping with their adult kids? I found this weird. Maybe that’s just me.

This book is mostly about pregnancy loss with a side of parenting your adult kids and your aging parents simultaneously (hence the sandwich). It’s very heavy at times. I don’t think it would resonate with many people with shared experiences of loss, but I can only speak for myself. I think it would have the potential to be triggering. Additionally, it was a big turn off to me when the main character played with clots expelled from her body. I found this disgusting and a detail that could have been omitted. It did not make this “more realistic” or enhance the reality of the situation.

The daughter was mildly annoying, but believable. Jamie and Maya were pleasant side characters, and even the mom and dad were fine.

But the only character I actually liked was the cat, Chicken. For this reason I did not give it a one star.

Very glad to be done with this one. It was not for me.

Content Warnings

suzy86's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

kdailyreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

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