Book Review: Wreck by Catherine Newman

I didn’t realise that Wreck was a direct sequel to Catherine Newman’s previous novel, Sandwich, when I first picked it up, but that realisation was a joy.

In Sandwich, during a week spent together at their holiday home in Cape Cod, we met freelance food writer Rocky and her husband Nick, their adult children, the anxious Willa and private Jamie, and Rocky’s aging but cantankerous parents. Though Rocky is a mess of worries about the generation both above and below her, the family’s love for each other powers them through a difficult week with warmth, laughter, and a few tears, too.

The gang almost all return in Wreck, where they’re back at the family home. This time around two things are preoccupying most of Rocky’s thoughts: a mysterious collection of bumps on her arm that is baffling her and all the doctors she visits, and a tragic local train accident, where Jamie has been troublingly involved in the aftermath. Both problems throw up existential crises.

But Newman’s expertise in treating life’s tragedies with an abundance of love and laughs means that however sad Wreckgets, it never stays down for long. In that sense, her first novel We All Want Impossible Things was an authorial mission statement: the story of a woman camping out at the hospice bed of her best friend, and them both finding plenty of joy, along with a lovably vast cast of supporting characters, as they wait for the end to come. Newman’s ability to find light in the darkness, to be honest about the shittiness of life whilst never forgetting the good things too, sometimes feels like a magic trick.

As with Sandwich, Wreck takes the form of Rocky’s inner monologue – which, if you are also an anxiety prone person, is a very relatable place to be. While marvelling at the easy-going steadfastness of Nick (who is in turn lovingly bemused by her), Rocky spends much of her time fretting about her family, and trying to work out what’s going on in their heads when they aren’t as eagerly communicative as she is. That’s not to say that Rocky isn’t smart, self-aware and funny, but that unrelenting anxiety is the presiding note here.

Newman’s novels tend to be slices of life, rather than having particularly event-driven narratives. As such, Rocky becoming slightly more comfortable with the uncertainty that fuels her fears, and with the fact that however much she adores her family, they’re always going to remain a little bit unknown to her, is what constitutes the plot here. Newman doesn’t try and force resolutions where they aren’t natural, instead finding truth and solace within the acknowledgment of our being unable to read each other’s minds, or to see into a frightening future. While she only grazes lightly on the multiple horrors churning around in the world right now, Wreck certainly lands with extra resonance in light of them.

I hope we get to visit Rocky and her family again soon – they are excellent company.

★★★★★

Wreck is published by Doubleday on 29 January 2026