No One Is Coming to Save Us

February 20, 2017
In her patient yet rich first novel, a Great Gatsby reboot, Watts (We Are Taking Only What We Need) digs deep into the wounds of a down-and-out African-American family in the contemporary South. Lone wolf J.J. Ferguson returns to economically depressed Pinewood, N.C., after 15 years to woo Ava, his high school crush, and build a hilltop mansion for all to envy. But the reunion is not what he bargained for. Ava, now married to Henry, a handsome but chronically miserable man with another family on the side, is a bored bank teller, at her wits’ end trying to get pregnant after three miscarriages (and searching for solace on mommies2b.com). Meanwhile Ava’s mother, Sylvia, is overweight, tired of being married to a perennial cheater, and filling the void by taking weekly phone calls from a 25-year-old prisoner she’s never met who reminds her of her son. The book takes a beat too long to find its rhythm, but when it does, it hits home—and hard. Watts powerfully depicts the struggles many Americans face trying to overcome life’s inevitable disappointments. But it’s the compassion she feels for her characters’ vulnerability and desires—
J.J.’s belief that he and Ava can work, Ava’s ache for a family, Sylvia’s wish to be seen and loved—that make the story so relevant and memorable.

Narrator Janina Edwards's Southern accent and mature, commanding voice contrast markedly with the passivity of many characters in this novel. The miserable circumstances of one African-American family unfold through Edwards's light drawl and varied tones indicating sarcasm, anxiety, and displaced desires. The "go along to get along" behavior of the older generation, reflected in certain characters like Sylvia, does not bode well for the younger generation, like Sylvia's daughter, Ava, who has subconsciously lived out the phrase regardless. Edwards draws listeners in with inflections that might sting or soothe at different times. Getting to know the people of this small North Carolina town through her narration is worth the time and effort. T.E.C. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

February 1, 2017

Set in rural North Carolina, Watts's first novel (after the award-winning short story collection We Are Taking Only What We Need) centers on the dynamics of a family struggling with strained relationships and disappointment. Sylvia carries on a phone relationship with Marcus, a prison inmate, to replace the distance between herself and her son, Devon. Ava, Sylvia's daughter, tries desperately to conceive a child and discovers a painful truth about her husband, Henry. JJ Ferguson, an old family friend, returns to town after many years away and causes disruption. Watts shares with us an often neglected segment of America--working and middle-class African Americans living in the current century--and all of the characters strive to find a balance between achieving what they want and settling for what life has dealt them. The many details of the Pinewood community ring true, particularly the contrast between the experiences of the older generation that remembers Jim Crow, and their children. VERDICT This quiet debut novel takes its time, much like the conversations among the various characters, which meander and loop around before reaching their point. The resolution is believable and gratifying without being pat. [See Prepub Alert, 10/24/16.]--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2016

Already a multi-award winner before publishing this first novel, Watts opens with JJ Ferguson returning to Pinewood, NC, to build his dream house and court high school sweetheart Ava. Ava turns out to be married, and her husband's growing cold. Billed as an African American Great Gatsby but with nuances all its own; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 15, 2017
The Great Gatsby is revived in an accomplished debut novel.Winner of a Pushcart Prize and other awards for her short fiction, Watts (We Are Taking Only What We Need, 2011) spins a compelling tale of obsessive love and dashed dreams set in a struggling North Carolina town. The furniture industry that once served as the major employer has shifted its factories to Asia, leaving former workers feeling unmoored and depressed. Even those who have jobs--Sylvia, who works for a social service agency, and her daughter Ava, a college graduate who has risen to loan officer in a bank--see that they have fallen far short of achieving the American dream. Watts creates tender, sympathetic portraits of her two main characters, women enveloped in grief: Sylvia's for her dead son, Ava's over her inability to conceive the child she desperately wants. Among the town's inhabitants, only JJ Ferguson seems to have succeeded: in the 15 years since he left Pinewood, he has become an enviably rich man. Suddenly, he has returned, and Sylvia wonders if he wants to show off, to prove that "someone like her, someone black, someone once poor, could come back to town and smash it underfoot." But revenge is not why JJ is building a mansion on the hill overlooking the town; he has come back for Ava, whom he has loved since they were children. JJ desires Ava with as much passion as Jay Gatsby felt for Daisy Buchanan. If he won Ava's heart, Sylvia realized, he "thought he could star in his own adventure, be the hero in his own story." That desire infects all of Watts' characters, who wish to star in their own stories, however modest. Sylvia simply wants to be a "known person," to feel "that she had been important to someone." That need compels her to form a relationship with a prisoner rejected by everyone else in his life. Ava's overwhelming need is to be a mother. Watts' gently told story, like Fitzgerald's, is only superficially about money but more acutely about the urgent, inexplicable needs that shape a life.

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February 15, 2017
Watts, author of a short-story collection, We Are Taking Only What We Need (2011), and winner of a Whiting Award and an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, explores The Great Gatsby's themes of yearning, loss, hope, and disillusion in her powerhouse debut novel. Set in today's South and delving into African American family life, the story primarily focuses on Sylvia, a middle-aged mother, and Ava, her thirtysomething daughter. They live in the same house and occupy complicated marriages that reveal both the tenuous and tenacious bonds of love. Other life-weary, imperfect characters reflect the economically depressed, near-ghost town, which somehow beckons Gatsbyesque JJ (now Jay), to return with his accumulated wealth and dreams of recapturing the best of his past. Watts' lyrical writing and seamless floating between characters' viewpoints make for a harmonious narrative chorus. This feels like an important, largely missing part of our ongoing American story. Ultimately, Watts offers a human tale of resilience and the universally understood drive to hang on and do whatever it takes to save oneself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)