Save Your Own
By Elisabeth Brink
Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Company (June 2006)
Paperback/288 pages/$13.95
Harvard Divinity School graduate student Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg is on the verge of losing her prestigious fellowship when she takes a job at a mismanaged halfway house to search for subjects for her Ph.D. dissertation on secular conversions. Growing up in the house of her parents—academics Gillian obediently refers to as Joan and Bertram—the thought of being kicked out of school and destroying her future in academe brings Gillian to the cusp of a breakdown that has been in the works for years.
Self-described as “a full-grown woman who looks like a ten-year-old boy, and not even a very handsome or cute one at that,” Gillian, who stands at four feet, nine inches, is the endearing heroine of Elisabeth Brink’s 2006 debut novel, Save Your Own, a witty page-turner about a woman who finds herself, despite herself. An overlooked, anxiety-ridden, narcoleptic 26-year-old who fantasizes incessantly about whom she might eventually lose her virginity to, ultra-intellectual Gillian stands in stark contrast to the women who inhabit the Responsibility House: twelve recovering addicts who are rowdy, defiant, and foul-mouthed and whose sexualities both shock and seduce her. But it is these stark differences that make Gillian and the women of the halfway house unlikely allies in shaping each other’s futures.
At Responsibility House (as in other areas of her life), Gillian feels a constant inner struggle between doing what she thinks is right and following the rules. She is repeatedly caught in the crosshairs of a war being waged between the residents, who want to retain some of their dignity, privacy, and self-respect, and House management, whose strict laws Gillian feels don’t always have the residents’ best interest in mind. This is made increasingly difficult as Gillian, who has never before been accepted for who she is by anyone, simultaneously seeks approval from both residents and the House director, an indifferent social worker who piles her unwanted responsibilities onto Gillian’s lap.
Along the way, some surprising (and some pleasantly predictable) things happen to Gillian, an unbelievable character Brink’s writing forces you to believe—and root for—until the very end. Save Your Own proves that sometimes salvation can be found in the most unexpected of places.
Author Elisabeth Brink lives in Newburyport and is working on her second novel set in northeastern Massachusetts (a fictional town a lot like Amesbury, she says) that tells the story of four distinct characters and how their lives intersect when they are swept up in a conflict that will help shape the future of their town. www.elisabethbrink.com.
Book Review – Save Your Own
By Elisabeth Brink
Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Company (June 2006)
Paperback/288 pages/$13.95
Harvard Divinity School graduate student Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg is on the verge of losing her prestigious fellowship when she takes a job at a mismanaged halfway house to search for subjects for her Ph.D. dissertation on secular conversions. Growing up in the house of her parents—academics Gillian obediently refers to as Joan and Bertram—the thought of being kicked out of school and destroying her future in academe brings Gillian to the cusp of a breakdown that has been in the works for years.
Self-described as “a full-grown woman who looks like a ten-year-old boy, and not even a very handsome or cute one at that,” Gillian, who stands at four feet, nine inches, is the endearing heroine of Elisabeth Brink’s 2006 debut novel, Save Your Own, a witty page-turner about a woman who finds herself, despite herself. An overlooked, anxiety-ridden, narcoleptic 26-year-old who fantasizes incessantly about whom she might eventually lose her virginity to, ultra-intellectual Gillian stands in stark contrast to the women who inhabit the Responsibility House: twelve recovering addicts who are rowdy, defiant, and foul-mouthed and whose sexualities both shock and seduce her. But it is these stark differences that make Gillian and the women of the halfway house unlikely allies in shaping each other’s futures.
At Responsibility House (as in other areas of her life), Gillian feels a constant inner struggle between doing what she thinks is right and following the rules. She is repeatedly caught in the crosshairs of a war being waged between the residents, who want to retain some of their dignity, privacy, and self-respect, and House management, whose strict laws Gillian feels don’t always have the residents’ best interest in mind. This is made increasingly difficult as Gillian, who has never before been accepted for who she is by anyone, simultaneously seeks approval from both residents and the House director, an indifferent social worker who piles her unwanted responsibilities onto Gillian’s lap.
Along the way, some surprising (and some pleasantly predictable) things happen to Gillian, an unbelievable character Brink’s writing forces you to believe—and root for—until the very end. Save Your Own proves that sometimes salvation can be found in the most unexpected of places.
Author Elisabeth Brink lives in Newburyport and is working on her second novel set in northeastern Massachusetts (a fictional town a lot like Amesbury, she says) that tells the story of four distinct characters and how their lives intersect when they are swept up in a conflict that will help shape the future of their town. www.elisabethbrink.com.