SAY SAY SAY

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.