Recent Reviews
Sandwich by Catherine Newman
After reading many books about the Nazi occupation of Paris during WWII, I turned to Catherine Newman’s humorous new book Sandwich for a change of pace. It is a fun summer story about a family’s annual weeklong summer vacation in a rental house on Cape Cod. This story will resonate with those fortunate enough to rent the same vacation house year after year.
Rachel (aka Rocky) and her husband Nick, and their two kids, Willa and Jamie, have rented a house in Sandwich, Massachusetts, for two decades. Willa and Jamie are now in their early twenties and no longer live at home with their parents. This year, Jamie’s girlfriend Maya joins the family. When they all arrive on Saturday and look around the house, Willa says, “It is weird that I’m kind of offended when they replace stuff? Like they didn’t even consult us.” Anecdotes like this one are scattered throughout the story.
Rocky, the narrator, is sentimental about the passing of time and emotional about her growing kids. She anticipates this week with exuberant joy as she reflects on the family moments and milestones of summers past. While grappling with her declining middle-aged body and mind, Rocky is literally sandwiched between her almost grown-up kids and her aging parents. On Wednesday, when Rocky’s parents arrive at the beach, Rocky says, “They are so adorable, these white-haired people—that I cry a little when I see them.”
Neurotic and emotional, Rocky is laugh-out-loud funny as she talks about melancholy, marriage, and menopause. Her husband Nick is a loyal partner and foil. And over the week, long held secrets wash onto the family’s shore.
The story does not provide insight into how Rocky became who she became. So, when the second half shifts to pregnancy, abortion, and the Holocaust, the dialogue feels a bit disjointed and incomplete. Despite that, the book deftly touches on the passing of time, aging parents, adult children, and the evolution of family relationships. There are moving moments and hysterical reflections. Sandwich is a great summer read. 4/5
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky’s powerful novel Suite Française is an insightful and frightening first-hand account of the German occupation of France beginning in 1940. Though many compelling novels have been written retrospectively about the German occupation (The Lost Girls of Paris, The Flight Portfolio, The Paris Library, Sarah’s Key, While Paris Slept, The Paris Architect, All The Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, Those Who Save Us, The Book Thief,) Némirovsky’s wrote the draft of this novel as the terrifying events of WWII unfolded. on scraps of paper. Vivid descriptions of her characters and their plight makes the story feels like a journalist posting dispatches from a war zone. However, Némirovsky was not a reporter; she was an acclaimed writer with several novels to her credit before the Nazis prohibited her publisher from printing her work. Though she and her husband converted to Catholicism and baptized their two girls, Némirovsky and her husband were born Jewish and were subject to the cruel Nazi edits that constrained the economic, social, and religious activities of all Jewish citizens including the wearing of yellow stars.
Némirovsky intended the book to contain five parts, like five symphonic movements, but she only lived to complete the first two parts: “Storm in June,” which describes the chaos and fear that erupted when the Germans marched into Paris, and “Dolce,” which describes life in a French province where she lived after the Germans took over their region. She states in her notes about the book, “My God what is this country doing to me? Since it is rejecting me, let us consider it coldly let us watch as it loses its honour and its life.” Némirovsky provides astute observations about the dynamics between the occupying German soldiers and the French villagers. Her characters capture the complex and wide range of responses to the seizure of their homes and businesses by the Germans. Some resisted. Some collaborated. Some sought economic gain. Some hated the Germans. A few learned to love them.
The origins of this book give the novel another rich dimension. Némirovsky was arrested and taken to Auschwitz, where she died of typhoid in August of 1942. Her husband, Michael, was taken to the Auschwitz gas chambers two months later. Before the Nazis arrested him, Michael gave his two daughters and their nanny a suitcase filled with Némirovsky diaries and draft of this book. For 64 years, her daughters feared opening the suitcase. They eventually did and found the draft of Suite Français which was published in France in 2004 and translated into English by Sandra Smith two years later.
Through her characters, Némirovsky’s provides political, historical, religious and sociological theories on the behavior of the French people during these horrific events. This novel reminds us how war creates chaos as laws evaporate and every person is affected. The Nazis murdered 6 million innocent Jews of which 75,000 were French citizens. And now, eighty years after the needless death and destruction, Hitler’s effort to control the world seems silly and absurd. As Némirovsky states in the last sentence of her novel, “All that remained of the German regiment was a little cloud of dust.” Suite Française shows us the fullness of humanity amid unfathomable tragedy. 4/5
James by Percival Everett
Percival Everett’s most recent novel, James, is brilliant. The premise is provocative and perfect. Everett has reimagined Jim, the enslaved character from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and renamed him James. James’ intelligence and compassion burst from the pages. He has secretly read many of the books from his owner’s library. His reading and writing has made him more insightful than the white people with whom he must interact.
James speaks with perfect grammar and erudition as do many of his fellow slaves. His knowledge of writers and philosophers is extensive. Yet to protect themselves, he and his friends revert to “slave talk” when white people approach. James says,“My change in diction alerted the rest to the white boy’s presence.”
As in Twain’s novel, Huck is running away from his violent father while James is fleeing because he fears he will be sold. He hopes to escape to a “free state” and earn enough money to buy his wife and daughter’s freedom. And thus, Huck and James embark on a dangerous and revealing raft ride on the Mississippi River.
The story illuminates the revolting behavior and attitudes of white people who often project their own inferiority onto the slaves they own. James should be read in conjunction with Huckleberry Finn or maybe instead of Huckleberry Finn. Highly recommend 5/5.
