No One Is Coming to Save Us

As Stephanie Powell Watts' novel descends toward its hard earned conclusion, Ava observes 'The possibility of the past . . . is that it can be alive if you let it. All of it alive, not just the terror and the beauty, too.' The observation seems to directly address Gatsby's illusion that 'Of course you can (repeat the past).' The novel seems to address the Fitzgerald classic but not copy -- it is the American dream if that dream arises from the poorer communities between East and West Egg, and the people who were only glimpsed in haphazard drives to the city emerge with complex, if imperfect, lives. In some ways, the story opposes Gatsby by featuring characters surrounded by tragedy and rising out of it rather than having their dreams show more dashed by one climactic event.

Whereas the earlier novel addresses the American dream of a small, insular world, Watts expands the dream to those who come from less privileged circumstances who still dare to want to improve their lot. The realism saves the characters from being brittle when their bright shining light in the distance turns out to be tarnished or unobtainable.

Watts weaves characters who don't have the luxury of letting handlers clean up their messes. And yet the strength displayed in living with the consequences of their messes make each sympathetic. Perhaps what made the book most successful is the author's ability to look into the past at the same time the action is moving forward. Watts does not lay out the tragedies that haunt Sylvia, Ava, JJ, or Henry at the beginning - only showing that they are affected by those tragedies. When the events are finally revealed the result is a deepening of sympathy and hard-earned wisdom for the characters. show less

The title is untrue. Someone (or someones) does arrive, but not until Sylvia, daughter Ava, son Devon, and son-from-another-mother JJ have just about run out of time and will. They all live in a small, dying Southern town, as the one restaurant that wouldn't serve them for most of its existence finally goes dark. Ava is a successful bank loan officer, and her mother Sylvia helps an incarcerated man who dialed her number accidentally, but it's all stagnant until JJ returns after a long absence and builds a mansion as bait for the unhappily married Ava. Critics have made comparisons to Gatsby, but no one ever heard from Gatsby's mom! Told from Sylvia's and Ava's PoV, this is a poignant portrait of lives half finished before they even show more began. The mysterious Devon's story is unpeeled slowly and carefully. Very well written, especially the internal voices. show less

Quite a bit has been said about No One is Coming to Save Us being an African-American version of The Great Gatsby. The first thing you need to do when reading this book in my opinion is to forget all that. Yes, there’s a big house and a guy who calls himself Jay. But this book stands very well on its own merits without trying to label the characters as Daisy, Nick or Jay. It’s a story about family, about facing up to the demons of the past and present and trying to move on.

I’ll admit that I found the start of the book quite confusing, likely because the people in the first couple of chapters didn’t match up to the blurb. Who was Marcus? Did Sylvia have another son not mentioned on the back cover? Why is he in gaol? When is JJ show more coming into the story more? The best way I found to overcome this was just to keep reading (and if that involved lying on the floor when the air conditioner was broken, that’s okay). It all came together for a story that is heartbreaking yet fascinating.

Stephanie Powell Watts has chosen a setting that isn’t commonly explored in the books I’ve been reading lately. Pinewood is a small town in North Carolina that’s dying. The furniture factories are going out of business as work is outsourced overseas. People are poor and the whole town has an air of desperation. It’s only the older townspeople like Sylvia and her husband Don who remember the town as a busier place, one that was less friendly to the African-American people. Sylvia has done her best to bring up her family and bring them out of poverty. On the material side, she’s done well. Daughter Ava has a college education and works at the local bank. Her son Devon – well, that’s a different story. But what Sylvia can’t achieve is happiness for her whole family. Ava’s married to Henry, who is underworked and bored. Sylvia knows that Henry isn’t good enough for Ava, but when former boyfriend JJ returns, she’s not sure whether she wants that for Ava either. Sylvia’s own husband Don is making a fool of himself with a young girl. It seems that none of her family is truly content.

Enjoyed is not the right word, but getting to look inside each of the character’s heads and feeling their pain and struggle was a great way to tell this story. I felt it brought me closer to the characters as a result and I really grew to love Sylvia. The way she describes her past and her worries for her family was sweet, right down to how she tries to meddle (with the best intentions) in a stranger’s life. I even grew to like the hapless Don. JJ was the only character I couldn’t quite connect with, perhaps due to his mysteriousness regarding his past. He seems to think that Ava can solve all his problems. Possibly the Ava of twenty years ago could have, but she’s grown past JJ. Like the other female characters, she’s strong, but just needs time to realise it.

I liked No One is Coming to Save Us. Perhaps without the expectations of The Great Gatsby theme, I would have liked it more. Would I read another book by Stephanie Powell Watts? Yes, but I’m steering clear of any comparisons!

Thank you to Penguin for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com show less

Dare I say I liked this retelling better than the original Great Gatsby? (I hear the mob forming now to eviscerate me for admitting to this.) It could be that the setting is contemporary, but I felt the characters in this book were easier to relate to and all of their stories evoked the struggles and challenges of the lives we live today. I applaud the author for tackling this tale and giving an old classic a healthy twist. I'm excited to see what's next for this author!

This is blurbed as a new and updated Great Gatsby, but let me start by saying the links to that classic are tenuous at best, in my opinion virtually non existent. At first I was reading this and trying to find the connection, disappointed when I couldn't and then realized I was doing a huge disservice to this book, so I pit it aside for a night and the next day started it over, with no preconceived notions. What I found was a wonderful story in its own right.

A depressed, mostly black town in South Carolina, the main employer the furniture factory now closed as are many businesses that depended on the money people earned from their jobs. Sylvia and Ava, mother and daughter are the two main characters and they are wonderfully fleshed show more out, real but with flaws like all of us. Sylvia, has had much tragedy in her past, wants to be seen, needed, Ava nearing forty wants nothing more than her own child. They are lucky in that they both have decent jobs, though no one really gets ahead financially in this town. Though they are lucky in their employment, they are not so lucky in their marriages. When JJ, comes back to town, now building a bog house on the hill, he appears successful to the others in town, but all he wants is Ava.

The dialogue in this novel is fantastic, free flowing and natural, this young author has a talent for this that many more accomplished authors lack. One of the hardest elements of writing or so I believe. These two women, and the men surrounding them are all in search of the American dream, and how they come to terms with their wants as opposed to their reality, is the story. And a fine one it is, I became invested in their lives, admired them at times, wanted to shake them at others, all signs of a very good book. So my advice is read this, but pay no attention to the blurb or comparisons. This is a young author with an amazing amount of talent, one I am sure we will see more of in the near future.

ARC from publisher. show less

Set in contemporary Pinewood, North Carolina, No One Is Coming to Save Us is primarily the story of Sylvia and her daughter, Ava. It's also the story of the men in their lives: Sylvia's sometimes-husband Don, Ava's beautiful, cheating husband Henry, and JJ Ferguson, who has recently returned to Pinewood and built a large house. And it's the story of Pinewood, a town where the jobs are gone or going, and poverty hovers where it hasn't already taken over.

The flap copy says "with echoes of The Great Gatsby," and JJ's story of sad local boy (he was split up from his sister and put in foster care after his dad killed his mom) returning to town years later to build a mansion and - he hopes - attract his old flame Ada does echo Gatsby's show more mansion and green light hoping to attract Daisy. But this book, at more than double Gatsby's length, didn't convey the characters' longing nearly as powerfully.

Quotes

You can't let people know what you dream - especially if you can't get it. (Don, with Sylvia, 2)

In her experience nobody got better from shame, only more afraid. Fear moved underground is the most dangerous feeling in the world. (Sylvia, 11)

But it might not be possible to pass on something you don't really know yourself....How could she expect to get what she didn't know she needed? (Sylvia, 35)

The thing you want is never the way you think. (Sylvia, 78)

Every once in a while you get reminded how truly impossible it is to know another person, even if you love that person, even if you live with him for years, for decades. The paradox of love was how you manage to feel it with so little information. (Ava, 112)

Don knew that one event doesn't make another, but many elements converge and mix together like the ingredients of a cake, to set the events that rupture the membranes of our everyday lives. By the time you see the thing and recognize it for the danger it presents, it is, of course, too late. (Don, 140)

She had realized it all, but what a difference between knowing and seeing with your own eyes. (Ava, 151)

The only crazy part was that most women did believe their men or chose to pretend. Most kept on believing right up to the point the men walked out the door or killed them. (Carrie, 178)

Everybody was keeping the wrong secrets. (Jay, 189)

"We want what's missing. Everybody wants what's missing." (Jay to Ava, 194)

"Why do the good people have to do the right thing? The assholes don't care and they get what they want." (Jay to Sylvia, 234)

...but only in retrospect could he appreciate how deeply he was wounded, and only the onslaught of years would reveal to him how much he had truly lost. The pain would come to him by degrees and for years. (Jay, 282)

An idea can come to you with such force that it can stick, get stuck, get you stuck. (Jay, 302)

Haven't we only done this trick? If you can't get what you want, want something else. See that the something else is good too. (367) show less

This novel centers on an African-American family in a small town in North Carolina, and primarily on the aging Sylvia and her daughter Ava, who is dealing with infertility, a philandering husband, and the return to town of her childhood best friend/old flame after a long absence.

My feelings about this one are so mixed that it's actually kind of hard to articulate them. There is certainly quite a bit here to like. Sylvia is a good character, complex and interesting. Ava was less so to me, but there were times when Watts made me feel for her pretty effectively. And there are some genuinely insightful moments, about all kinds of things: family relationships and those between men and women, aging, regrets, class and race and sex, the human show more experience in general and that of black women in particular.

And yet, there was just something about the writing here that I struggled with, and I can't even entirely put my finger on what it is. Or rather, I can identify some of it: The way it sometimes randomly changes POV for a few sentences or a few pages (a style some people can pull off, but which usually just really irritates me, and mostly did here). The way it also sometimes slips into flashback without warning in a way that can be briefly confusing. The way the characters sometimes slip out of realistic-sounding dialog and start speaking more in Meaningful Abstractions.

Actually, now that I look at that list, maybe that's explanation enough. I don't know. What I do know is that for a while in the middle, I was absorbed enough in these people's lives to be reasonably happy with it, anyway, but by the end I was feeling impatient and a little unsatisfied. show less