Sandwich

Pickle Me This Digest: City Stories, Summer Reads

Jul 15, 2024

My birthday fell on a Monday in late June, and I had a very specific vision for how I wanted to celebrate: an afternoon at the beach on the preceding Sunday, and upon my beach blanket one day short of age 45, I would be reading Catherine Newman’s novel Sandwich, just been published the week before. The book purchased en-route to the beach, of course, because I like getting books for my birthday and buying books on my birthday. But that morning I went to check if Book City Beaches had the title in stock, and they didn’t. In fact, not a single copy of Sandwich was in stock at a single indie bookstore anywhere in Toronto, save for one at Book City St. Clair… but Line 1 on the subway was closed north of Yonge that weekend, and I don’t think there is anything in the universe I could desire enough that I’d board a shuttle bus to get it, not even Sandwich, even now that I’ve actually read it and might deem it worth a trip—but no, shuttle bus. Shudder.

Downtown indies had had copies in stock, I learned when I phoned around, but they were sold out. Our big chain book store didn’t have copies at all (and continue not to—what’s going on here?) except for one single copy at the chaotic Indigo in the Eaton Centre, a place I enjoy visiting only a soupcon more than I like boarding shuttle busses, but I had a vision, remember? I had to have that book, and so on the day during which I was meant to be luxuriating in birthday pleasures, I was hopping on the subway to go to A MALL (another shudder) and no one in my family could completely believe it, how my commitment to my vision had overrode my commitment to never going to malls ever.

But the journey seemed charmed. Someone on the subway was reading Dolly Alderton’s Ghosts, and when I told her how much I loved that book, she returned my enthusiasm tenfold. I walked to the Eaton Centre past Osgoode Hall and through Nathan Philips square, and nobody was there, the city oh so quiet, until I walked into the mall and found myself in the midst of a drag queen brunch for Pride Month, the Eaton Centre raucous with laughter and song, hardly the mall experience I’d been anticipating, and it was wonderful. Miraculously, that single copy of Sandwich was even on the shelf at Indigo right where it was supposed to be, and then it was in my grateful hands—would it live up to my impossibly high expectations?

Everything else about my birthday vision would come up a bit short. Turns out my trip to the mall would be a highlight. A subway jumper at Castle Frank on the westbound track. We were going east and left the station, but our train stopped halfway across the Bloor Viaduct and the power was cut. My kids were scared and upset, and I had to reassure myself via my reassurances to them about how a city holds all kinds of stories, and some of them are hard and terrible ones. A maze of (short-turning) streetcars to finally arrive at the beach. Once at the beach, it was so ridiculously windy that children everywhere were crying in pain at being hit by blowing sand, except not my children, who were just mainly miserable, huddled inside our beach tent which would have been blown to Buffalo had their weight not held it down. It was ridiculous. All of it was ridiculous.

A line from Sandwich: “It’s so crushingly beautiful, being human. But also so terrible and ridiculous.”

Oh my gosh, I loved this book so much, a book that reads like a letter to a friend, which is not so surprising considering that Catherine Newman was an OG blogger. A book that’s stayed on my mind since I finished reading, especially since I just arrived home from a week at a rental cottage, the kind of experience that Newman documents in her novel. Nothing fancy—we sleep on a tiny pull-out couch in the kitchen.

The way that time works during a week away: “‘It’s only Monday,” I say. I say this every year. This is the part of our vacation where I feel like the week will never end. Like its just going to stretch out luxuriously this way for the rest of time.’

And mostly this is a novel about the glorious mess of motherhood and menopause, and memory-making, and secret-keeping, and old wounds opened up again. About aging parents, and adult children, and the preciousness of time, especially time together. About what Newman’s protagonist Rocky terms the “reproductive mayhem” that constitutes her entire adult life, and it goes on and on. About living in a nation whose Supreme Court’s ideological bent means that Rocky daughter will have fewer rights to bodily autonomy than she did. It’s about family, and summer, and the impossibility of stopping time, and about the crushingly beautiful, terrible and ridiculous experience of being alive.

Sandwich is the perfect beach read. Do yourself a favour and make it part of your vision: add it to your summer reading list!

Hello City

During the pandemic, when nobody knew what was what, we’d stopped riding transit, and took over the empty streets of downtown on our bicycles, taking the St. George/Beverly bike lanes down to Queen, and then down Peter toward the waterfront, a mostly breezy journey except for the hill above Front Street where we’d cross over the railway tracks and around the Sky Dome, and then we’d arrive at the big plaza, where people never were, and we were able to ride on the sidewalks because no one else was using them, and that was pretty fun, even though nothing else was. And because we’d never cycled downtown before, I didn’t properly realize that it wasn’t always like this, that Peter Street was usually bananas, that my kids wouldn’t ordinarily be able to ride on the sidewalks as they pedal furiously to get up the hill, that the Sky Dome wasn’t actually a no man’s land... (Read the rest)

Camping With Bright Creatures

My family worked really hard to buy me a book for my birthday that I would like, but hadn’t directly asked for. This process required looking up titles in line with my interests, and then examining our bookshelves to ensure I didn’t own it already, and then carefully studying my reading log to ensure I hadn’t read it in the last two years. A chancy endeavour, this was, but they were fairly confident. “Either you haven’t read it,” my husband told me, “or you just hated it so much that you eliminated any and all evidence of ever having come into contact with it.”… (Read the rest)

P.S. A Cool Thing

A highlight of the last month, for me, was the opportunity to be part of The Gather Society’s spring event, a truly wondrous evening at which every attendee received a copy of ASKING FOR A FRIEND, and I got to spend time in their glorious company. Sign me up for anything at which nearly every person you meet informs you that they’re an avid reader. I’m dubious about networking events, but this was truly something special. Thanks so much to Emily, Erin and especially Kirsten for having me be part of your magic. Everyone else: learn more about The Gather Society and follow them on Instagram!