Review: WRECK

Today I was reviewing in my mind the five books I've read since the new year has begun and for crying-out-loud I could only remember four of them. I had to consult Goodreads to refresh my memory of this book, Wreck by Catherine Newman. And the funny thing about that is I absolutely loved the book.

Wreck is the sequel to Sandwich, which one of my book groups read last year and everyone loved. If possible I think Wreck is funnier and more poignant than the first and I thought it was plenty funny and poignant.

In Sandwich we meet Rocky who is thrilled to be vacationing with her grown children and her parents, as they vacation on their annual trip to Cape Cod. She is squeezed, literally since the house was small, between the two other generations (in a sandwich) and their needs and she is moody due to her menopause symptoms. While there she starts to feel the weight of some secrets from the past and confronts her feelings about potential future changes. Wreck picks up the story two years later. Rocky and her family are together again, this time their own home in Western Massachusetts. This time the title, Wreck, related to Rocky's health being knocked off kilter and about the news of a train wreck which killed one of her son's friends from high school. Both become obsessions for Rocky's focus.

At many points in the story Ricky finds herself down the rabbit-hole of the Internet finding out information she doesn't want to know about the possible cause of her damnable rash that keeps getting worse. I've done the same thing and usually the results are that good. 

Remember the world from back when you couldn't even find out if you had strep throat without a doctor calling the wall phone in your kitchen? Now you just click into your computer and discover that you have cancer - or that you have - I'm seeing this now - a white-blood-cell disorder called leukopenia - or that they've scheduled your autopsy.

When her daughter is home from work with a migraine, Rocky has to stop herself from googling

how often a migraine turns out to be an occult or bursting brain aneurysm because this is a bad neighborhood in [her] mind that nobody else should be led into. 

There are so many brilliant moments in the book, all of them find me nodding my head. Been there, done that. After her father, who lives with Rocky and her husband after her mother died, can't recall a friend's name, Rocky finds she can relate.

I know this exact feeling. I can be on my mental hands and knees, flailing around under the couch of my mind with a hockey stick, trying to sweep out a name I can't remember — and all I'll dredge up is a Ping-Pong ball, a catnip mouse, and a spool of thread. If I look away, though, sometimes it might creep out on its own little feet.

Or who can't relate to this? When Rocky is ambushed by her grief over the death of her mother, she realizes it has become like a background noise in her life. 

Grief is like the sound of the exhaust fan over the stove—a constant hum that recedes a little to the background over time, though you never get to turn it off.

One reviewer said she thought the book was basically plotless and I would agree, but I would add it was plotless in a good way. Rocky and her family are all living their lives, warts and all. Sometimes things don't go as planned, there are road bumps, and misunderstandings but in the end there is love, And it is love which makes the difference.

I confess to crying during a good deal of this book. I was very touched by it, clearly.  Afterwards I instantly messaged one of my fellow book club members to urge her to read it, if she hasn't already. Now I urge you to do the same, but start with Sandwich. The book could stand on its own but why not get the fuller picture? Besides the books are both easy and enjoyable reads.

My rating: 5 stars.

2026 is off to a good start!

-Anne