Preview
  • We Can Only Save Ourselves

  • A Novel
  • By: Alison Wisdom
  • Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky
  • Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (29 ratings)

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We Can Only Save Ourselves

By: Alison Wisdom
Narrated by: Jesse Vilinsky
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Publisher's summary

"Alison Wisdom's addictive, down-the-rabbit-hole debut reads like The Girls by way of The Virgin Suicides, with an extra dash of Cheever's unsettling suburbia. The result is sinister and surprising: a novel I couldn't put down, and one that I kept thinking about long after I'd reached its unexpected, chilling end." (Emily Temple, author of The Lightness)

One of Newsweek, Bustle, and LitHub's Most Anticipated Books and Goodreads' "Debut Novels to Discover in 2021", We Can Only Save Ourselves is the story of one teenage girl’s unlikely indoctrination and the reverberations in the tight-knit community she leaves behind.

Alice Lange’s neighbors are proud to know her - a high-achieving student, cheerleader, and all-around good citizen, she’s a perfect emblem of their sunny neighborhood. The night before she’s expected to be crowned Homecoming Queen, though, she commits an act of vandalism, then disappears, following a magnetic stranger named Wesley to a bungalow in another part of the state. There, he promises, Alice can be her true self, shedding the shackles of conformity.

At the bungalow, however, she learns that four other young women seeking enlightenment and adventure have already followed him there. Her new lifestyle is intoxicating at first, but as Wesley’s demands on all of them increase, the house becomes a pressure cooker - until one day they reach the point of no return.

Back home, the story of Alice’s disappearance and radicalization is framed by the first-person plural chorus of the mothers who knew her before, who worry about her, but also resent the tear she made in the fabric of their perfect world, one that exposes the question: Isn’t suburbia a kind of cult unto itself?

Combining the sharp social critique of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere with the elegiac beauty of Emma Cline’s The Girls, this is a fierce literary debut from a writer to watch.

©2021 Alison Wisdom (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
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What listeners say about We Can Only Save Ourselves

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Just ended

The story was beautifully written but it just ended. Like absolutely out of the blue. I enjoyed the perspective from the other mothers. Left feeling frustrated.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Abrupt Ending

Story was ok but left me wanting to know more. Curious to read other reviews.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Bold, original, mesmerizing...

Highly recommend to all. We Can Only Save Ourselves reminds me of Ishiguro’s novels, with its pared down language, enigmatic and often (though not always) well-intentioned characters caught up in a larger and darker world than they know or seem to grasp. She does not moralize, rather, Wisdom asks us to open our eyes to the unfathomable complexity of the human need to connect and belong, as well as our instinctive yearning to be free.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Depressing

Great narration. She has a gentle voice and clear speech. I spent the entire listen wanting to shake the main character to wake her up. The story is depressing. It doesn't check my boxes for true, beautiful, or even important. Reading is personal, though- this story was not my cup of tea.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Awful

A awful book without a point and completely unsettling and odd. I will never get these hours back

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1 person found this helpful