#20BooksofSummer2025 – Nos 11 & 14 – Newman and Barry

My internet is back, but it’s patchy, so I bought a wireless home hub to fill in the outages! I’ve now read 17/20 books of my 20 Books and have some reviewing catch-up to do. Here’s two more for you…

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

There was a time when my parents rented the same cottage at Trebarwith Strand in Cornwall for three years on the trot, and by the third year, I must have been about 16 and fed up of Cornwall beach holidays. I can’t conceive of going back to the same rental house for twenty years like Rocky, Nick and their family., even if it is on Cape Cod. (A little montage of my own photos from a Cape Cod vacation are to your right.)

They all fitted in well when they first started going, but Jamie and Willa are now young adults and it’s more of a squeeze – especially as her parents will join them for a couple of nights. There’s Jamie’s girlfriend, Maya, to fit in too – not forgetting the cat (who is called Chicken!). Rocky, aka Rachel, has reached that stage of life where her children will soon no longer need her, and her parents will need her again as they age: she is the filling in the inter-generational sandwich!

You can sense from the outset that this is the year that a reckoning will happen (well, it would have been a boring novel if it hadn’t!). Rocky is also menopausal and having a bit of a ‘is that all there is?’ type mid-life crisis.

Here’s the thing about menopause, though, that I don’t entirely understand. We’ll exchange a few words like this? A seemingly slight disagreement? Only then rage fizzes up inside my rib cage. It burns and unspools, as berserk and sulfuric as those black-snake fireworks from childhood: one tiny pellet, with seemingly infiitie potential to create dark matter – dark matter that’s kind of like a magic serpent and kind of like a giant ash turd.

I could so identify with Rocky on the menopausal rage! Luckily, holding it all together is the unflappable, ever easy-going Nick. I’m not going to tell you all the dramas that occur, building up to that reckoning – each family member will have varying degrees of trauma, confusion, misunderstanding or epiphany, with Rocky at the centre of everything. However, Newman tells the tale with great humour and handles all the issues sensitively. I also loved that she combined all this with a nostalgic look back at holidays past – as when someone stole Willa’s flip-flops.

We call this style of childhood nostalgia, the catalogue of grievances.
‘Oooh, are we reminiscing about Mama’s failures?’ Nick says cheerfully. He has walked over to join us.
‘Just that one,’ Willa says. ‘Unless I think of others. Don’t bandwagon, though, Dad. This is just my own personal dumping…’

This was a perfect summer read. Drama, emotion, humour and characters you can identify with.

See also, reviews by Bookish Beck, A Life in Books.

Source: Own copy. Doubleday hardback, 229 pages. BUY in pbk at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

I’ve only read Beatlebone of Barry’s output previously. It was a novel that managed to combine beauty and comedy in equal measure; I mostly enjoyed it, resolving to read more Barry. I added his Booker longlisted Night Boat to Tangier to my shelves, joined by this novel later which jumped the queue, for you see, The Heart in Winter is set in Montana in 1891 in a pioneer town. Yes, it’s a Western – the kind of historical novel I find hard to resist.

It’s late autumn in the Rockies, and the town of Butte, is full of immigrant workers, mostly Irish, earning a hard living in the copper mines. Tom Rourke may be Irish, but he’s no miner, although he shares his kinsmen’s talents for hard drinking and hard whoring. Tom, however, is a poet and balladeer. Like Cyrano, he helps those who can’t write compose love letters, he sells a bit of dope, and he works for Lonnie Crane, the town’s photographer.

It’s at Crane’s studio that he first sets eyes on Polly Gillespie – who has arrived in town as a mail-order bride for Captain Anthony Harrington, the mine captain. They’re there for marriage photos. Tom is immediately smitten and knows that her life with the Captain, who is extremely devout and abstemious (he self-flagellates as he prays) will not be worth living and she will be off if she can… As he goes along, he extemporises a new song…

If I had Polly in the woods
I’d do her all the good I could
If I had Polly in the woods
I’d keep her there ’til morn-in.

And if I met Polly in the woods
I would kiss her if I could
For that’s a thing that would do her good
And a cup of tay in the morn-in.

Soon, they will run away together – stealing a horse, a golden palomino no less, and plan to head out west for California. However, this means crossing the mountains in winter – but they’re in love – none of this matters. They hole up in a shack and revel in their love. But there’s a posse of mad Cornishmen hired to bring Polly back… I can’t tell you how it ends but you know there’ll be a tragedy.

Barry’s writing set in this wintery landscape is so atmospheric, brilliant, violent and visceral, yet full of moments of occasional beauty and dreaminess too. In Barry’s hands, this doomed romance takes on a life of its own – we really care for Tom and Polly. All Barry’s secondary characters are vividly created too – especially the villains. I wish there were more atmospheric Western romances like this, for I loved The Heart in Winter.

See Kim’s review too.

Source: Own copy. Canongate hardback, 214 pages. BUY in paperback at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.