Reviews for Wreck : a novel
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up toSandwich (2024). Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events ofSandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news.Gosh, they don’t write,I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans. A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly
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The appealing if underdeveloped sequel to Newman’s 2024 novel Sandwich follows 50-something writer Rocky through another series of midlife dilemmas. Rocky is at home in Massachusetts with her husband, Nick, and their college-grad daughter, Willa, when they read in the newspaper that an old high school friend of their son, Jamie, has been killed by a freight train at a railroad crossing. Rocky feels awful, especially after learning that the wreck might have been due to the railroad’s outdated safety equipment. The episode distracts her from the article she’s supposed to be writing about spatchcocking poultry, as do the inconclusive results of tests her dermatologist had her take to determine the cause of her mysterious rash, which continues to spread. Her anxiety spikes even more when she learns that the railroad is a client of the management consulting firm that Jamie works for in New York City. The plot is pretty threadbare and Newman doesn’t go very far with the overarching mortality theme, but she nimbly leavens the heavy material with Rocky’s quirky humor, as when she calls the fussy Willa her “princess angel baby” or struggles to fix a ceiling fan (“It’s not out of the question that I’ll Godzilla the entire fan out of the ceiling and throw it to the floor, screaming”). The author’s fans won’t be disappointed. Agent: Jennifer Gates, Aevitas Creative Management. (Oct.)
