Zibby chats with New York Times bestselling author Catherine Newman about SANDWICH, a wise, hilarious, and exquisitely written story about a family’s yearly Cape Cod vacation—but this time, fifty-something Rocky is sandwiched between her half-grown kids and aging parents and her secrets and memories start coming to the surface... Catherine discusses the universal experiences of middle-aged women, the real-life moments that have inspired her writing, and how she writes about life’s messiness with sensitivity and laugh-out-loud humor. Finally, she reveals her idea for her next book and shares the book she read recently and loved.

Transcript:

Zibby: Hi, Catherine. Welcome. Thanks for coming back on Mom's Center Time To Read Books. Oh, you're so sweet. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh! It matches your pillows.

Catherine was just holding up blank and I am holding up her book and she's surprised by that. So that was very sweet. So excited to talk about Sandwich. I laughed out loud. I teared up. All the good things, you know, you're just so good at eliciting feeling and that is the joy of reading. So there you go.

Catherine: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: You're welcome. Okay. Tell listeners what Sandwich is about. Sandwich? 

Catherine: Sandwich. Wow. I think this is like my first thing talking about it. 

Zibby: Yay. Okay. We can take as many takes as you want. 

Catherine: I know. I'm going to have to, you know, my elevator pitch. I mean, do you remember, because when I was talking to you about something else and I had already written it, but it wasn't published and the elevator pitch was like menopause.

That was the elevator pitch.

But I'm trying to, thicken it out a little sandwich is about a woman in her fifties named Rocky. 

Zibby: So far so good so far so good. Keep going 

Catherine: In one week at a Cape Cod vacation home that she and her Husband and their two kids have been going to for like 20 years And so it's this one week of vacation her parents join them and she's kind of sandwiched in the middle and she's just having a lot of You Memories of years past and this feeling of the kind of preciousness of now and how precarious it is with growing kids and elderly parents and also just the layers and layers and layers of this trip they've taken for so many years.

Zibby: Wow. Well, You do such a good job of taking us through every, I mean, your original assessment of reproductive mayhem. I mean, it's every stage from, you know, procreation to the end of line or, or so they might wish, you know? So, um, and how we as women have to to deal with that. I mean, it's a, it's like a comic novel that involves everything about your fifties, but also all the times leading up to that too, right?

It's not just about that. It's all the, that's just the point at which to flashback. 

Catherine: Right. And that, and also that if you're in a reproductive body, by the time you're in your fifties. So much stuff has happened to it, like I feel like even just like being in a woman's body, having sex with men, like, come on, you know, how many times have you like been pregnant or had a problem with the birth control or had a yeast infection or UTI or, you know, I had a baby, like so many things and I just feel like it's it really accrues like it gathers up this kind of weight of history and then if your partner's with a man.

Your partner's with someone who really does not share that experience with you. And I wanted to get at Rocky's sort of rage about that. You know, that she just has had all this trauma, this embodied trauma, and joy, but a lot of trauma, and that she's kind of alone in that. 

Zibby: That's true. 

I mean but they're just always just so nice and supportive all the time, you know, so it's fine.

Can I read a couple of my favorite parts? 

Catherine: Oh, of course. I would love that. 

Zibby: Um, okay. And there were a bunch. Well, I'll just read a couple of different, uh, Sections. Okay, so this is sort of, like, 60 pages in or so. You see, the short version of makeup sex in the outdoor shower is that it doesn't happen. I get a splinter in my palm, I get a cramp in my calf, I can't stop laughing, and there are mechanical difficulties, anatomical impossibilities, or like bungling preschoolers with a shape sorter, and you're shaking your head.

That's never gonna go in there. Oh my god, and I'm not even going to read because I'm too embarrassed to read like the rest of this passage. And then I'm going to fast forward into this other hilarious section where Rocky goes to the doctor's office to talk about menopause and all of that, and she's talking about atrophy after menopause.

And all of that, and you, and then Joe and Rocky start talking about it, she's like, I'm going to think about it, but also how am I, I'll just say, how am I a feminist, an advocate for reproductive rights? Our bodies, ourselves, hear me roar, blah blah, and I'm only just now learning about vaginal atrophy. I don't know.

She said, and I could hear her sigh because they hate us, I guess. But also, can we like, can we just like call it at some point I'm gonna edit. We're sticking stuff. I'm going to actually stop. Here, I'll fast forward to this. I mean, could we take it all as a sign to just, like, give it a rest? Could we just not?

I just saw an ad for men who want to last longer. Who wants a guy to last longer? Finish up is my feeling. My library book's not going to read itself. I think that was my favorite. That was so funny. I'm not laughing because I've already laughed so many times. Then there's another scene where we've moved on from the sexual hilarity, and it's another poignant scene with her and her daughter, and she says, You good, Mom?

Willa says now. And I turn from memory to face her. What is going on with you? I have an, I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. I really don't need another thing to worry about. Nick looks up from his magazine. Oh, honey, I say, I'm sorry. Don't worry about me. I'm totally good. I'm so, so happy to be here with you.

This is how it is to love somebody. You tell them the truth. You lie a little. And sometimes you don't say anything at all. Oh, I love that part. Okay, so from the hilarious to the poignant. Discuss. 

Catherine: Well, I think that is life. As it's lived, I mean, for me, at least, I do feel like, you know, I talked to you about my other novel and that takes place in the hospice.

And one of the things I was trying to communicate in that novel was how much, even when you're in this really kind of precious exalted space of somebody dying, There's still the tumble forward of daily life, like it doesn't actually ever pause. And I feel, I was thinking that that's true in this book too, that on the one hand, she's having this, it's like, if she could stop time, she would, she wants her parents to be alive forever.

She wants her kids to be only as grown as they are, like wants everyone with her that she's so greedy in that way. And of course that's not happening, and even in the course of this week, that's not happening. So they're just tumbling forward in their body lives, like people need to be fed, and the plumbing isn't working, and you know, there's just so much.

kind of daily comedy that I feel like is just life. Like everything just keeps being ridiculous. Like her father, who's in his 90s, just says hilarious thing after hilarious thing, because that's how he is, you know, even though part of what she feels all the time is that she's going to cry because She's not going to get to keep him for much longer.

So I guess that is the mix for me. And the truth is that was the mix for me when the kids were babies too. Like that feeling of, you know, wanting every moment to be precious, but also it's, that's not really how you live. Mm hmm. Know that also it's. It's like the kids are like barfing in their car seats on a string cheese and then go to your meeting with like a string cheese melted into the back of your skirt and like all of the ways that life was just so kind of beautiful and also chaotic and also kind of terrible.

I feel like it's, that's just how it is, maybe. 

Zibby: I think you're right. I mean, is this just you putting your stuff into this character? Or is there, is there a difference? 

Catherine: No, it's just me putting my stuff into the character. 

I can't even, I'm not sure what I would, it's funny, I was going to ask you the same thing about your book.

I mean, I was, it's funny, I was just looking back at Blank and thinking, like, Pippa, your character, who has It's so much in common with you, right? Like a lot of structural things like she's a mom, she's getting divorced, she isn't publishing, she's publishing a book. And I was going to ask you something similar about kind of where you feel like if you consciously are like this I'm lifting from life, this I'm making up or if it's just seamless for you as a process.

Zibby: Oh, yeah, the whole thing's totally seamless the whole time.

No, thank you for asking me about it. Pippa's not divorced, though, so she's, we have that in common, but that's okay. But we have, you know, we, she is in a really troubled marriage. I will say that. 

Catherine: Oh, did I spoiler alert that? You can take that. I can take that. She's divorced by the end. 

Zibby: Yeah, uh, not even. Yeah, by the end she is.

Yes, by the end she is. 

Catherine: Okay, okay, okay. So, scratch that. Pull that out. 

Zibby: Okay, I'll take out the word divorce. Okay. But we do have a lot in common. I, I, I, I like to say that we would be very good friends. Is that what you say? Yeah. I say we're, I say we're not the same person, but we would be very good friends.

The things, the events don't happen, but the way that she, Yeah. Thinks about everything is how I sort of think about it inside. That's why I'm like struggling with my next book and I literally was just talking to my team at lunch and saying, you know, maybe I should just scrap my draft so far and just like write Pippa again, because that's so much easier.

Catherine: Who's that someone you know so well? 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Catherine: Well, who is your next character? Who is your next narrator, I have to say? 

Zibby: No, no, I just, I might just like scrap my draft and start over. I don't know. I'm in like a down mood about the book today, but we'll see. I mean, but this character is so, she's different from your last character, but they both have, you know, they're both so funny.

They have a lot in common. 

Catherine: It's so different. I would, I'm not really sure. I have a really hard time writing fiction, I think. I think I'm not that imaginative, and even the things I make up that are sort of inconsequential feel really false to me. So it's, It's this weird, it's really hard. Like I'm thinking about a next book and it is the same character and like, well, I just give her a different name and the kids will be the same kids.

Like in one book, I mean, my son, Ben was like, wow, it's me and Birdie. Only you made me a girl. I was like, I know, like, I can't fictionalize that much. 

Zibby: You're making me feel a lot better. My kids, literally, I read them the first couple of pages and they were like, you didn't tell us it was about us. 

Catherine: Right. And you're like, clothes and also all the best stuff is from your life. 

Like that's what is so sparkling and real is everything you lift out of life. I mean, I, that's how I feel. 

Zibby: Well, it almost doesn't. It doesn't matter if it's fiction or memoir, if the writing is landing, like it doesn't matter to the reader, right, like this could be your memoir and it would, it would have the same effect.

I mean, maybe not, cause I wouldn't know who you were, but very close. 

Catherine: Yeah, no, no, it's true. I know. And then there's just, yeah, my parents read this book. I was really nervous because there's a lot of humor that centered on how absurd they can be. And I was really worried about it because like what I hoped would was that There would be no way to read this book, Sandwich, without coming away with a sense of how much Rocky adores them, right?

Like that, I hoped that that was the ringing est takeaway. Yep. That turned out to be true for them. And I was really worried that it wouldn't be. I was worried that my parents would be like, Oh, you took a lot of pot shots at us and are like, Crappy memories and our like ridiculous way of being and, and they weren't, they didn't feel that way.

My dad, my dad said something in an email, like there were elements of my personality that I recognized unhappily. I was like, that's fair. You know, that's okay. I mean, but he, I feel like they got the gist of it overall. And that, that's, that's great. That meant a lot to me, you know, that they would meet me in good faith with that.

And I felt that way about the kids, too. The kids read it very lovingly. And Michael, who I'm married to, who keeps playing the same exact mensch in everything I write. He's just so sweet. He's so good natured about it. He feels like he always comes off like great and he really doesn't care.

Zibby: So would you ever just write, like, just take another piece of life after this and write a memoir next?

Catherine: Oh, a memoir? No. I think I wrote some nonfiction when the kids were younger. My first two books were parenting, kind of parenting memoirs, I think is what the genre is called. I feel like fiction gives me a little veil to hide behind that it helps me like protect my people that everything it's just not so I don't think I could write like this about I could only write like this about myself at this point I don't feel like I could reveal my kids just completely transparent.

In a memoir and I like the I like that fiction allows you to conveniently make stuff up when it yes you know like I feel like I like in blank the Central seat of the book itself is made up and then it kind of is this anchoring fiction for the rest of it, you know, that, I don't know, there's something about that, that I feel like is a really good mix, that all the feelings are real, all the relationships are real, but there's this kind of central fiction, and it's, it's just like a little protective, I think.

Zibby: I like that. That's a good way to think of it. Are you going to write another book? Next. I mean, are you? 

Catherine: Yeah, I want another book. I have this idea. I don't know. I haven't really talked about it. I have this idea about, I've been, this maybe is TMI, but I've been in this crazily long diagnostic process of, Getting something that is an autoimmune disorder diagnosed and I feel like everyone knows somebody who has been in this process where it's like, oh, they think it's this and then they think it's that and I haven't been especially ill, which is also part of the weirdness of it.

They saw weird stuff, you know, I got some bad blood work, whatever. And it has just mushroomed into this kind of profound. mystery and this kind of diagnostic detective story. And it's really, it's been a really strange experience. And I want to write something about that, but I'll fictionalize it in some imprincipled way, like the doctors will be somewhere different or I'm not really sure, but there's something about like the, I think I have more to say about the secrets the body holds, you know, something about, or sort of what it is to hit this age and like the end of, I want to say the end of youth.

I mean, I, I realized that happened a while ago. I'm 55. It's not like my youth just ended. But there's something about this age where it's like, I'm, I feel like I'm on this different bodily path now. It's, it's a little hard to explain that. And it's a lot of the parts of it are, are pleasurable to me. Like I love, I actually really love not being of reproductive age anymore.

Like I never need to be pregnant again. I find that way, you know, like I don't, so there are a lot of good things, but I feel like I think I want to write something about like a medical mystery and there's a book that came out a couple years ago called, Oh my God, what's it called? My brain talk about menopause.

This is where things just fall out of it where it's just like a sieve and the things are water and they're just pouring through and nothing's catching because somehow it's called Invisible Kingdom. Oh yeah, that was so good. Yep. So good. And that book, which is the kind of book I love, it has that quality of that book, Beautiful Boy, that's part journalism, part memoir.

And Invisible Kingdom is that same, like, journalism and memoir. And I feel like I want to write a book that's like that, but fiction. That's like the same thing, only instead of like journalism and memoir, it's like memoir and fiction or journalism and fiction. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. But we'll see.

I haven't started writing it. And I feel like maybe heading it into like an election and there just may be things that make it like, this isn't the right time to write a book. I may have to write it. At the beginning of next year. That's what I'm thinking. Like, are you ready every day? 

Zibby: No.

Catherine: Okay. 

Zibby: No, I'm going to be totally late.

I'm really, I supposed to have my book. Yeah. My deadline is July. It's May. It's not going to happen. 

Catherine: It's not going to happen because you had a two book deal or you already, you just sold this book straight out. 

Zibby: I sold it right before blank came out, but I had to write, I wrote like a 60 page outline. So I know.

Sort of everything that's going to happen. And I've written, I've written like 16, 000 words, but I have to write the rest. I have to write the rest in like two months. 

Catherine: Okay, you're not going to write it in two months, but you've done a ton of it. You've done the hardest parts. 

Zibby: I don't know. 

Catherine: That's how I feel.

Zibby: I'm feeling very discouraged. 

Catherine: Oh, I'm sorry. I believe you. I totally know. Also, you're so busy, like, to carve out the time you need. I feel like writing time has to be this busy. Like, just bubble. It just has to be that way. 

Zibby: I would like to finish this tour. I'd just like to finish the tour. But, um, I'll get there.

But this is not about me. This is supposed to be about you. 

Catherine: It is. It is about me. I'm just like putting your brain on the sly. 

Zibby: Oh, I, I don't know. I love hearing what you're saying about writing fiction because it's how I feel about writing fiction, which is that I don't really know how to write fiction and I don't have that great an imagination.

So I'm just like kind of riffing on reality very closely. And that's why I'm struggling with these new kids and you know, like, how can I make them different? 

Catherine: Have you ever like read a book about how to write a novel? Because I have. 

Zibby: Um, I haven't, but my editor has suggested it.

Catherine: That's excellent. You must have been like, um, yeah, thanks.

Zibby: I was like, I'm not going to read a book about how to write a novel, which of course I should. I mean, I've taken lots of classes over the last, you know, 25 years or something, but I'm like, I'm just going to wing it and then we can fix it together.

Catherine: The Attitude. I read a really short book about how to write a novel because it turned out I didn't know anything about plotting or pacing. And then I had to read like a really short book about it and then that was helpful. What book did you read? It's called Take Off Your Pants or Put On Your Pants.

Zibby: What? Are you sure it's about writing?

Catherine: It's like there's two styles of writers People who plot everything. Yeah, people who pants everything. Seated their pants, I think is the gist of it. Like, do you do it by the seat of your pants or do you plot at all? And I think this book is advocating for plotting.

For knowing sort of where your book is headed before you start writing it. And so I think it's called, take off your pants. I can't remember. It's very short, and it looks like a ridiculous little book, but I found it incredibly useful. Like, it helped me understand a little bit about narrative structure, which I should not even be admitting because I read more than anyone I know except for you.

Like, I should know how a book is structured. You know, I read like a billion novels a year, but yet I had to get a little book out. 

Zibby: Yeah, she recommended I read Skin the Cat or something, Skin the Cat, but I didn't read it. 

Catherine: They all have these names like this. That are allusions to some, like, idiom we don't even know.

Zibby: It would be funny to take the Take Off Your Pants book, like, wrap it, and then, you know, with a crowded house for, like, the weekend, like, someone gets this book, and who gave it to them? Like, you know? Right? It starts disrupting everyone's marriage, and then at the end, it's like, wait, what? That's what was going on?

That's my writing book. You know? Right? Yeah. But you're a novelist. I know. Anyway, that would be funny. Well, you can write that book. All right. I'll read that book. Well, I'm definitely not asking you for advice. 

Catherine: I'm kidding. I definitely don't. 

I don't know. 

Zibby: Tell me about some of the millions of books. Is there anything that you have, like, been obsessed with lately that you've read?

Catherine: I just finished a book called Leaving by Roxanna Robinson. 

Zibby: Oh, yeah. That was beautiful. 

Catherine: Read it? 

Zibby: Mm hmm. 

Catherine: I loved it. I might read it again just to understand that. It's paced so beautifully. It's like she really takes her time. I always feel like I have to rush through everything or I'm going to lose everybody.

That's my feeling. Like I have to be really quick, in and out. I have to write a short book that moves really quickly because Otherwise, people are going to fall asleep or put it down and never pick it up again. And that book, it's not that it's so long. I mean, it's like 300 pages, the regular length, but it was so exquisite.

Like it was so, it just moved through this beautiful story. And I loved it. What about you? 

Zibby: But no, I loved it too. But you and Roxanna Robinson are like totally different people. Do you know what I mean? Like, she, She talks like that too, you know, that's what she's, I mean, yeah, yeah. Well, I'll send you the link to the podcast.

Yeah. But she's lovely and thoughtful and not that you're not, you're, you're, I wouldn't. You're hilarious and honest and open and real and they're different things. You bring different things to a conversation and you bring different things to a book and that's why it's great that we all can read all these different types of books and be friends with different types of people, right?

Catherine: That's a really good point. I know it is funny that I would like suddenly really idolize somebody who is really different from me. That's not going to be super useful. 

Zibby: No, I, I, I look longingly at beautiful paragraphs or like new ways to describe, you know, a napkin or something. Like it's beautiful, but like maybe not, that's not my superpower.

Catherine: What about you? Have you read anything great in the last couple of weeks? 

Zibby: Have you read Annabelle Moynihan's new book? That's really fun. 

Catherine: No, no. 

Zibby: Oh, Summer Romance. You have to read it. 

Catherine: Okay. Okay, it's on my radar. 

Zibby: I, I really enjoyed it. 

Catherine: I sometimes feel like, like a jerk. I'm just waiting for people to send me review copies and if they don't, it's, I like forget to get it.

You know what I mean? 

Zibby: It's not out yet. It's not out yet. 

Catherine: No, I know, but I want like a galley. 

Zibby: I'll ask her. Or I'll send you mine. If I, let me see, I'll look, I'll look after this. I have it somewhere. I might have already lent it to someone. It's really where it might be. 

Catherine: I totally just reached out to her. I just, me and I'm so used to, as I'm sure you do, I get probably one one hundredth of the books in the mail that you get and still, like, they're just piled up all over the place.

And if I want to read something that's not in that pile, it's really shocking to me. 

Zibby: Yeah. Well, we'll get this into your pile.

Catherine: Okay. Thank you. 

Zibby: Well, thank you. This was such a fun conversation. We're like all over the place. It's a perfect, it's like a perfect sandwich conversation. It's perfect. It's the perfect compliment to this book.

So anyway, thank you so much. Bye. Feel better. 

Catherine: Bye.