San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Learning to find oneself while caring for others Say, Say, Say
There are two types of books in the world: ones that transport you (to a faraway place, to a different time) and ones that teach you (about experiences you’ve never had or people you’ve never met). Every so often, I come across a book that checks both boxes, and Lila Savage’s debut novel, “Say Say Say,” is one of them. The place Savage takes us is the world of dementia, which isn’t as scary as you’d expect — especially in the hands of an expert tour guide. And, while we’re there, she teaches several valuable lessons: How to be present with grace and dignity. How not to look away. How life goes on.
Savage’s poetic yet prosaic story begins when Ella, a Minnesota artistturnedcaregiver in her 20s, is hired by Bryn, a retired carpenter, to help care for his wife, Jill, who suffers from Alzheimer’ slike symptoms as the result of a head injury suffered in a car accident a decade before. Ella is welltrained in the awkward twostep of gently inserting herself into a family at its most difficult time. In fact, she’s a pro: “Somewhere along the way, sadness had lost its power to shock . ... It still reached her, but was like recognizing a flavor, like eating a jelly bean without looking first to see what color it was. Oh this, she might think, I know this taste. ... This is forgetting, forgotten, gone. This flavor is grief.”
But she quickly realizes that her usual approach won’t cut
Book event
Author Lila Savage will appear at 7:30 p.m. July 11, Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave., S.F. www. green applebooks.com
it with these new clients, who will be harder to keep at arm’s length. For starters, their son is only a few years older than Ella; they even have an acquaintance in common. And, at 60, Jill is much younger than most of the other people she’s worked with. And then there’s Bryn, who is so devoted and wellintentioned, it’s hard not to befriend him, let alone want to spring him from the minutiae of caregiving. Ella becomes close to him. Still, when he assumes her partner, Alix, is a man, she doesn’t correct him.
Jill’s condition worsens over the course of the novel. She repeats the same words over and over — among them, “Say, say, say,” hence the title; she refuses to bathe or change her clothes; she becomes increasingly agitated and harder to care for. As she loses herself, Ella learns who she really is, what she wants and deserves from a relationship, and also that she can still pursue her art.
This is not to say everything gets tied up in a neat bow at the end — it doesn’t, thankfully. But Savage follows the opposite arcs of these women with such kindness (that’s the only word for it), even the most difficult moments of the story feel buffered by grace. Savage was a professional caregiver for 10 years before she became a writer. Reading this slim, elegant book, one has the sense that she has carried the most important skills from that job into her new line of work.