Same As It Ever Was

The blog of Nashville’s Parnassus Books (of which Ann Patchett is co-owner) has proved to be a rich vein for book recommendations. The 2024 Gift Guide: Fiction Edition has, in particular, paid off well for me.

I’ve just read two of the books that appear on that list, both secured from the Provincial Library Service.

Sandwich, by Catherine Newman, is described like this on the Parnassus blog:

This is a book I will place in the hands of every 40-something woman trying to balance raising kiddos and aging parents while attempting to have some semblance of intimacy within their marriage. I had no idea I needed to read this book, and I am so grateful I did. Funny and poignant, I will reread this book on the hard days and remind myself it’s okay to laugh (and cry).

I am neither 40-something, nor a woman, but I loved this book nonetheless. It takes place over a week in a beach house on Cape Cod: Rocky and Nick have gathered for the week, as they have for decades, with their (now-adult) children, and are later joined later by Rocky’s own parents. 

We have spent many weeks at the shore over the last three summers, with various combinations of family, and I saw a lot in the book that rang familiar. It’s a breezy read, well told, structured around the 7 days of the week, and, spurred on by getting it as an one week “express loan” from the library, a whipped through it in a pleasant two days.

In a similar vein, albeit at much greater length, with many more webs that weave together, Same As It Ever Was: A Novel, by Claire Lombardo, is a multi-generational “sandwich” story about parents Julia and Mark, their adult children, and their own parents.

Here’s what Parnassus writes about the book:

Lombardo is a master of the domestic novel. She is able to depict the complexity of a marriage, the pull women feel on various versions of the self, and what connection to others truly means and feels like in a way that feels honest and raw in the most beautiful way possible. I adored this book and almost couldn’t bear to finish it.

I also adored the book. Since I finished it yesterday—also the result of sprint—I’ve felt strangely like I lived inside the novel, and, being unable to discuss this with Lisa (who’s reading it now) feels like keeping secrets.

Lombardo is a skilled writer, and the structure of the novel, back and forth through time, hinting at, but withholding details, feels like the way that life plays out.

Another book I read this month, found, in this case, not by Parnassus, by by Lisa, who noticed it’s been filmed for release later this year, is The Salt Path by Raynor Winn.

I am a sucker for impossible voyage stories, and I was attracted to the book for that reason, and because it’s a story of a couple roughly my age dealing with loss and illness by heading out to walk the South West Coast Path in the U.K.

I feared that the plodding nature of a long distance walk wouldn’t translate well to the page, and that the book we would a series of “walked some more, had lunch, found a campsite” vignettes. And it is that. But Winn is a colourful writer, and her descriptions of both their interior landscapes and the exterior ones they are trudging through, are lovely. I look forward to seeing how it translates to film.