Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet

Published by Crown on August 6, 2013

"A person can learn a lot from misery," says one of the characters in Save Yourself. If so, Kelly Braffet's characters are well-educated. The miseries of high school, of dysfunctional families, and of small town life are all vividly illustrated in Braffet's novel.

Patrick Cusimano's father, while driving drunk, killed a child named Ryan Czerpak. His brother Mike blames Patrick for calling the police to report his father's crime. The Czerpak family, on the other hand, has demonized Patrick because he waited nineteen hours before he called the police.

Two young women create additional tension in Patrick's life. One is Mike's girlfriend Caro, a waitress in a dead-end diner. The other is Layla Elshere, a sixteen-year-old Goth. As the daughter of a controversial preacher, Layla -- like Patrick -- knows what it is like to be ostracized because of an unpopular parent. Although Layla has a blood-drinking boyfriend, she is attracted to (and shares) Patrick's alienation, while Patrick justly regards Layla as a jailbait stalker.

The other key player is Layla's younger sister. Verna wants to be known as something other than the sister of "Freakshow" Elshere and is sometimes appalled by Layla's behavior, yet she's impatient with the repressed attitude of her parents and is drawn to the adventurous independence of Layla's antisocial friends.

With the possible exception of Verna, the characters in Save Yourself aren't particularly likable, but they've been written into being with such brutal honesty that whether they are likable is irrelevant. None of the primary characters are loathsome; they are capable of cruelty but they aren't malicious. Rather, they are reacting to the cruelty that surrounds them. Being nice, turning the other cheek, makes them feel powerless and marks them as weak. They're immature, confused, self-destructive, and insecure. They hate their lives. They have zero self-esteem and, given the parents and peers who are constantly pointing out their faults, it's easy to understand why. They are exploring possibilities, searching for acceptance, trying to empower themselves. They want better lives but they don't know how to change, so they dress up their lives "with some ugly throw pillows" and pretend to be satisfied. They make bad choices because that's what kids and young adults do, but Braffet makes their choices understandable (and forgivable).

Braffet's powerful storytelling drives home the theme of Save Yourself: that young people crave safety and acceptance and will do foolish things to attain them. She captures the perils of adolescence and young adulthood in language that is blunt but fluid. The male and female characters are equally convincing. The setting, a town of chain restaurants and beer bars and convenience stores that are "like purgatory, with snacks," is drawn with photographic realism.

Unfortunately, the storyline involving the Elshere sisters leads to an improbable denouement that struck me as contrived and out-of-step with the rest of the story. Braffet makes some of the novel's secondary characters ridiculously misogynistic and senselessly violent but fails to develop their personalities in a way that would make those characteristics believable. On the other hand, the resolution of the main conflict involving the two brothers is credible. The story of the brothers is dramatic while the story of the sisters becomes melodramatic. When the two stories intersect in the penultimate scene, the result is less than satisfying. Save Yourself isn't a bad novel -- much of it is quite good -- but had Braffet not been so determined to give the reader a thriller ending, she might have crafted a great novel.

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