Summer reading. For me, those words suggest an unhurried expanse of time to lose myself in a good story 鈥� fiction or nonfiction. Save the dystopian novels till the fall, please; right now, I want books that glimmer like fireflies with dashes of humor and nostalgia. I鈥檝e just read two that fit those summery specifications.
Catherine Newman鈥檚 new novel is called Sandwich, after the town on Cape Cod where her characters have rented a cottage for one precious week every summer for the past 20 years. The title also winks at the situation of our main character, Rachel, nicknamed 鈥淩ocky鈥� who鈥檚 鈥渉alfway in age between her young adult children and her elderly parents鈥� 鈥� all of whom crowd into that ramshackle cottage.
In the opening scene of Sandwich Rocky鈥檚 husband, Nicky, stands paralyzed, plunger in hand, before the cottage鈥檚 single, overflowing old toilet. As Rocky鈥檚 vacation week progresses, other things also slosh and overflow: secrets; messy emotions, like anger and shame; and, as Rocky tells us, her own aging body:
Newman elegantly segues from -like comic passages like that one to elegy. To return to the same place every summer, after all, is to be periodically brought up short by the passage of time. In the middle of the novel, for instance, Rocky uses another metaphor to describe her position in her family and this time her tone is infused with anticipatory grief:
Sandwich is my idea of the perfect summer novel: shimmering and substantive. One more aspect of Newman鈥檚 book deserves highlighting: like many other recent novels by best-selling female authors 鈥� I鈥檓 thinking of , and Megan Abbott 鈥� Newman introduces a storyline here about abortion. She writes about that contested subject 鈥� and the emotions it engenders 鈥� in a way that I鈥檝e never encountered in fiction before.
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As a city kid who grew up in an apartment without air-conditioning, I have happy memories of seeking relief from the heat by wandering around grand New York department stores like Bloomingdale's, Macy鈥檚 and B. Altman. Julie Satow鈥檚 new narrative history, called When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, is a treat for anyone like me who yearns to time travel back to some of those palaces of consumption at the height of their grandeur. But even more revelatory are the stories Satow excavates of the women who presided over three of the greatest and now-vanished New York department stores: Bonwit Teller, Lord & Taylor and Henri Bendel.
Geraldine Stutz rescued Bendel鈥檚 in the 1960s 鈥� as shopping moved to the suburbs -- by turning its small size into an advantage: creating exclusive boutiques within the store that attracted customers like , and . Some 30 years earlier, Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, who Life Magazine dubbed America鈥檚 "No. 1 Career Woman鈥� revolutionized fashion by championing the sporty 鈥淎merican Look鈥� at a time when French designers held sway.
But the stand-out figure of the trio is Hortense Odlum, a self-described 鈥渉ousewife鈥� whose husband bought a near-bankrupt and 鈥渟agging鈥� Bonwit Teller during the Great Depression and asked her to visit the store to judge it with a woman鈥檚 eye. One of her first smash successes was the introduction of a 鈥渉at department鈥� on the main floor. In 1934, Hortense became the first woman president of an American department store.
Satow specializes in entertaining cultural histories 鈥� her was a history of New York鈥檚 Plaza Hotel. Here, she intersperses descriptions of such wonders as Salvador Dali-designed window displays at Bonwit鈥檚 with accounts of the racism pervasive in these department stores.
For those readers immune to the allure of shopping or the shore, be assured that more of summer reading recommendations 鈥� especially mysteries and crime novels 鈥� are coming your way. You can also see what NPR staff and critics are
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