Say Say Say

May 1, 2019
A millennial adrift learns about life while caring for others. Anyone who has ever worked in the helping professions knows that these jobs can create strange intimacies. This is potentially fruitful territory, but whether or not this novel works depends very much upon how one feels about its protagonist. Ella is almost 30. After dropping out of her graduate program, she started working as a caregiver. This isn't her chosen vocation; it's just what she does to pay rent, buy groceries, and pick up vintage tchotchkes at thrift stores. She lives with a woman named Alix who is her sexual and romantic partner, but Ella doesn't like to think of herself as part of a couple. When a retired carpenter named Bryn hires Ella to care for his mentally impaired wife, Jill, Ella becomes a part-time member of their household. There isn't a lot of dialogue in this novel, nor is there much in the way of action. What there are, mostly, are third-person descriptions of what's going on inside Ella's head as she cares for Jill, gets to know Bryn, and watches the pair interact. Ella has a number of revelations about love and life. Mostly, she thinks about herself. This is true of most people, probably, but it doesn't make for much of a story unless you find Ella as fascinating as her author does. The most interesting aspect of this novel is the weird relationship between the protagonist and the narrator. Consider this passage: "Ella was ashamed of how her own beauty comforted and seduced her; she visited it like a secret lover, she stroked it softly like a young boy watching television, one hand tucked into his pajama bottoms, fondling his small, flaccid treasure." This very long sentence contains what is surely one of the most awkward similes in contemporary fiction, but it also shows us an author who is maybe a little bit too in love with her heroine, not to mention a bit too in love with her own voice. A tedious first novel that might have been a rich short story.

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Starred review from May 27, 2019
Savage’s startling, tender debut follows Ella, a young caregiver hired to help a woman of rapidly diminishing mental capability, and the relationship Ella develops with her and her husband. At the novel’s start, Ella is on the cusp of 30 and living in Minneapolis with her girlfriend, Alix, whom she loves deeply and uncomplicatedly. After dropping out of graduate school, Ella makes a modest living as a caregiver, though she harbors vague artistic inclinations. Her newest client is Jill, who, at 60, is younger than her usual clientele; her mental state has deteriorated ever since she was in a car accident over a decade ago. Unable to hold coherent conversations or wash herself, Jill has been taken care of by her husband, Bryn, a retired carpenter. Initially hired to provide Bryn with a reprieve, Ella finds herself gradually immersed in Bryn and Jill’s lives, and soon her role as Jill’s companion evolves into something more intimate and complex. Over the next year, Jill’s condition worsens and Bryn becomes more visibly strained even as the force of his love for Jill stays steady, and what Ella witnesses between the two of them challenges her ideas of love, spirituality, and empathy. Quietly forceful, Savage’s luminous debut is beautifully written, and will stay with readers long after the final page. Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb, the Gernert Company.

August 16, 2019

DEBUT Nearing 30, once-aspiring artist Ella wonders if she's wasting her capabilities by working as a caregiver yet feels she makes a difference every day. Currently, she tends to 60ish Jill, left brain-injured after a car accident, who can barely utter more than the title's "say say say." Yet Jill's retired carpenter husband, Bryn, shows his wife a tenderness and devotion that brings Ella up short, making her consider her own uncertain relationship with girlfriend Alix and the nature of relationships generally. As she goes about her work, with Jill's condition gradually deteriorating and Bryn becoming increasingly anxious, Ella learns more about the couple's marriage and develops a compassion for Bryn, a sort-of one-sided love, whose nature cannot be easily articulated. VERDICT First novelist's Savage's lesson in the complexity of caring is carefully detailed and graced with a quiet drama that will be appreciated by readers not looking for fireworks. [See Prepub Alert, 1/7/19.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2019
Artist-turned-caretaker Ella gets hired as a part-time companion for Jill, plagued by early onset dementia since a serious accident years ago and barely able to speak. Perhaps even more crucial than tending to Jill, Ella gives Jill's husband, Bryn, a respite from his steadfast caring for her. Inside their hermetic home, basically Jill's entire world, Ella tries to meet Jill on her level and honor the couple, whose "roles were stripped genderless through a wildfire of loss." But Ella, who's committed to her girlfriend, is surprised by the flush she gets in the presence of movie-star-handsome Bryn, who seems young, strong, and still able to find joy in the face of his beloved wife's deterioration. Savage's debut unfolds in dense, descriptive paragraphs that are mostly transcriptions of first-person narrator Ella's thoughts. This level of intimacy can get bogged-down in the details; action and conversation occur largely off-page, and tensions are as much obscured as revealed. Still, Savage explores interesting territory, in particular, commitment, aging and caretaking, and gender's influence on all of it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)