On this blog, we recently discussed somebody’s opinion that nobody is publishing novels about the working classes any longer. This isn’t at all true, however. Such novels are there to be found and if people are not finding them, I’m guessing they aren’t looking very hard. For instance, there is a recent novel by Kelly Braffet called Save Yourself. It isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a good, solid novel that I greatly enjoyed reading.
The novel offers a very interesting contrast between the lives of its working class protagonists, with their crappy jobs and hopeless existences and the ridiculous overwrought dramas of their upper-middle class neighbors. In a brilliant move, Braffet doesn’t tell us how well-off the upper-middle class protagonists are. We only discover this when a working class protagonist observes them at a restaurant where she works and notices an enormous contrast between their reality and hers. This complete unawareness of the rich neurotics of how different their lives are from those of the working poor is the novel’s strongest point. What I really liked about the novel is that this contrast isn’t overworked. You see it if you want to see it, but the author doesn’t push it in your face.
This is precisely what distinguishes literature from entertainment. A writer of an actual work of literature isn’t worried that readers wouldn’t get the point. She lets them approach the work of art on their own terms and take what they will from this.
The writing is surprisingly good, very simple and clear. The author seems to have an MFA but even this didn’t make her write in a pretentious, prettified way so many of the MFA graduates do. I definitely recommend the book, and I’m very glad I discovered this promising writer among the mountains of crappy novels American authors publish every year.
Clarissa's Blog 
Thanks for this Clarissa…
I am writing from the Rust Belt of Ohio (where my life started over 70 years ago)
…last year, my lady and I were lucky to spend a few Winter days in Naples, Florida….
………the disconnect between the two locations is a very huge gulf indeed.
respectfully, Observer Jules
LikeLike
You are welcome! And you are always welcome on this blog.
LikeLike
\\ working class protagonists, with their crappy jobs and hopeless existences and the ridiculous overwrought dramas of their upper-middle class
I wouldn’t want to be either. Are there no positive characters there?
LikeLike
Can you imagine a novel about happy, psychologically healthy individuals? That would be a total snooze. 🙂
LikeLike
Have you had a chance to read “The Interestings” by Meg Wolitzer? She’s supposed to be a big deal, widely praised; I read the book after I had read raving reviews in several places, but I was quite disappointed (perhaps I expected too much?). Some good insights, and a decent account of drug abuse and depression, but the writing is bursting with redundancy and I felt whole paragraphs should have been cut (e.g. cutting the last 7,000 times the book mentions that Ethan Figman is brilliant and talented would have saved 20 pages); the characters were unevenly presented — some felt real, some like caricatures of people.
Anyway, it most definitely does present the gap between people of vastly differing earning potential. I feel like a douche for disliking it, plus I am a scientist so what do I know about literature…
If you get a chance to read it, I would be curious as to what you think of it.
LikeLike
Wow, you totally read my mind. 🙂 I’m starting the book right now.
LikeLike