Save Your Own [Hardcover]

Elisabeth Brink (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 2006

"I am a full-grown woman who looks like a ten-year-old boy, and not even a very handsome or cute one at that ... My mind, thankfully, has more to recommend it."

So begins Save Your Own, a wicked satire as well as a rewarding story of self-transformation. Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg, intensely cerebral, narcoleptic, and a virgin, is in her final year at Harvard Divinity School. She needs simply to write her thesis and collect her diploma. But Gillian's life takes a sharp U-turn when the faculty deem her thesis topic, "secular conversion," unsuitable and threaten to cancel her funding. Determined to prove them wrong, she sets out to gather data and takes a job at a halfway house for addicted women.

Here she must quickly transform herself from obedient graduate student into hardcore authority figure. The women push every limit she has, and Gillian finds herself at once repelled by their crass ways and in awe of their gutsy impulsiveness. Ultimately, they inspire her to realize her own true impulses and desires, as well as her need for love, which she's ignored for too long.

Infused with a buoyant humor and striking intelligence, Save Your Own announces the arrival of a sparkling new voice in contemporary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg will lose her Harvard Divinity School fellowship if she doesn't get to work on her dissertation project, an ambitious examination of "secular conversion experiences," in this sweet, well-premised but feeble debut. To procure conversion narratives, Gillian becomes a supervisor to 12 recovering addicts at Responsibility House, a residential treatment program for women. Gillian wants to keep her stipend, but, at 26, she also desperately wants to lose her virginity, and she hopes the motley women of Responsibility House will show her the ropes on the latter while providing narrative fodder for the former. Gillian's hyperintellectual personality and homely appearance contrasts sharply with the sexily roughshod residents, from whom Gillian seeks approval; she also finds herself lusting after a Harley-riding resident named Janet. Gillian's attempts at gaining the women's acceptance and trust falls at cross-purposes with the strict rules of the halfway house, a conflict that plays out repeatedly; Gillian's moral posturing presents questions that are compelling, but end up repetitive. And while Gillian is well developed as a narrator, her relationships with the residents are thin, resulting in often wooden exchanges. Still, the sympathetic reader will applaud Gillian as she gets some of what she wants, and more. (June 6)
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Review

"This inventive debut doesn't imitate the traditional British academic comedy but, rather, forges an identity all its own." Kirkus Reviews, Starred

"Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg is a romantic heroine unlike any other...Save Your Own is a keeper." USA Today

"Elisabeth Brink hooks the reader...and we start to pull for [Gillian] in this colorful 'ugly duckling to swan' story." Boston Globe

"A smashing debut -- hilarious, smart, and charming...One of the most original characters I've encountered in recent fiction..."--Stephen McCauley, author of Object of My Affection and The Man of the House.

"Sly, inventive, filled with irony and laughs and truth." -Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales and High-Wire Moon.

"A brutally honest and truly funny first novel by a writer of immense talent." -Peter Orner, author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikonga

"Ultra-funny, super-sexy, and wickedly smart, with a philosophical heart that beats with furious, mystical passion." -Terri Giuliano Long, author of In Leah’s Wake

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (June 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618651144
• ISBN-13: 978-0618651146
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,539,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

If you had asked me when I was twenty if I would like to be a novelist, I would have said, 'Yes, of course.' I had always been a voracious reader, had written fiction and poetry, and half my brain lived in a perpetual daydream. But fiction writing seemed an impossible dream. I had been raised to think that being economically self-sufficient and making a useful contribution to society were the highest goals a person could or should aspire to. Writing couldn't pay the bills, and it wasn't at all clear to me then how a novel could make the world a better place. Looking back, I can see that I was your basic second-generation American. My grandparents were poor immigrants; my parents worked hard and rose into the middle class; my siblings and I were expected to take our opportunities and go the rest of the way to the top. Making art didn't fit in to that scheme.

The problem was, the various professional jobs I tried (publishing, high-tech marketing, advertising) didn't give me much satisfaction. I had a hard time caring whether a particular company made money or not. I ended up enrolling in grad school at 30 as a way, I think, of getting closer to what I loved while satisfying the family mandate to be involved in some kind of practical advancement (although American literature isn't exactly practical). But when I finally got my degree and was offered a tenure-track job, I turned it down. It's not that I didn't want to teach ' I think teaching is a great art ' but I couldn't stand the thought of spending all my free time writing scholarly articles and books. A few weeks later I got up one morning and wrote the first draft of a short story. I guess you could say that I resisted fiction writing as long as I could. But there was something inevitable about finally arriving at that place.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, lively tale., September 23, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Save Your Own (Hardcover)

Gillian is in her final year at Harvard Divinity School and needs to write her thesis - but when her topic 'secular conversion' is deemed unsuitable, she sets out to prove them wrong and takes a job at a halfway house for addicted women, seeking a change. Her new position provides challenges and changes she never could have predicted - and leads her to rethink her life and very personality in this funny, lively tale.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Wonderful, Touching Story!!, June 15, 2006

By 

Kay Cunningham (Lutz, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Save Your Own (Hardcover)

Wow! What a great story this is. It captures the angst and insecurities that probably most of us suffer from at one time or another in a funny, loveable, laughable, and thoroughly believable person. I so enjoyed reading a story where the heroine was not some wildly-intelligent, drop-dead gorgeous chick that possesses not a whit of psychosis. I think everyone will have a hard time putting this book down. And, boy, I thought Publishers' Weekly was way off the mark on their review. Definitely a BUY, READ, and RECOMMEND!!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Free choice is what makes us human.", June 6, 2006

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Save Your Own (Hardcover)

The protagonist/narrator in Elisabeth Brink's" Save Your Own" describes herself as "a full-grown woman who looks like a ten-year-old boy, and not even very handsome or cute one at that." Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg is a twenty-six year old emotional wreck. Her overly controlling parents raised her to be a compulsive student and she has no friends, male or female. Gillian is enrolled in Harvard Divinity School, but her dissertation on secular conversion experiences is going nowhere; she is in danger of losing her fellowship. In addition, she suffers from narcolepsy; she tends to fall asleep during episodes of stress.

In a desperate effort to get her dissertation off the ground, Gillian takes a minimum-wage job at Responsibility House, a state-subsidized residential treatment program for female drug addicts and alcoholics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What a culture shock this proves to be! Sheltered, timid, tiny Gillian suddenly finds herself trying to communicate with profane, sexually active, and aggressive women (half are former prison inmates at the women's correctional facility at Framingham) who are filled with rage and frustration.

"Save Your Own" is reminiscent of Elinor Lipman's fiction in Brink's depiction of offbeat individuals who are struggling to find their place in a tumultuous and hostile world. The residents of Responsibility House are vivid and fully realized. They include Janet Tremaine, a charismatic gay woman with a formidable physique and considerable self-confidence, Florine, a former streetwalker and addict with a secret ambition to be a professional baker, and Stacy, a sadistic and resentful individual with a talent for organization and a penchant for spying on her fellow Responsibility House residents. Gillian graduates from keeping tabs on her clients to being their counselor and confidante. She even fights to win them more autonomy, since she firmly believes that "a freer, less bureaucratic society would achieve greater therapeutic results."

This is an entertaining, quirky, and touching coming-of-age story in which Gillian slowly changes from a terrified and dysfunctional mouse into an articulate and compassionate adult. Brink's sardonic humor, lovely descriptive writing, and insight into the psychological lives of her characters make "Save Your Own" a satisfying debut novel.