{"product_id":"we-can-only-save-ourselves-9780062996145","title":"We Can Only Save Ourselves","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Alison Wisdom's addictive, down-the-rabbit-hole debut reads like \u003cem\u003eThe Girls\u003c\/em\u003e by way of \u003cem\u003eThe Virgin Suicides\u003c\/em\u003e, 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 \u003cem\u003eThe Lightness\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of \u003cem\u003eNewsweek, \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Bustle, and LitHub's Most Anticipated Books and \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eGoodreads' \"Debut Novels to Discover in 2021,\" \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eWe Can Only Save Ourselves\u003c\/em\u003e is the story of one teenage girl's unlikely indoctrination and the reverberations in the tight-knit community she leaves behind.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlice 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBack 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?\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Combining the sharp social critique of Celeste Ng's \u003cem\u003eLittle Fires Everywhere \u003c\/em\u003ewith the elegiac beauty of Emma Cline's \u003cem\u003eThe Girls\u003c\/em\u003e, this is a fierce literary debut from a writer to watch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWisdom, Alison:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Born, raised, and based in Houston, Texas, Alison Wisdom has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, received a novel-writing grant from Wedgwood Circle, and was a finalist for this year's Rona Jaffe Award. She has attended Tin House and the Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where she was a finalist for the Emerging Writers Fellowship. Alison's short stories have been published in \u003cem\u003ePloughshares, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Indiana Review\u003c\/em\u003e, and more.","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50478414135570,"sku":"9780062996145","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_274b20a0-68d6-4a9c-99d7-b8c230e26b55.jpg?v=1730300035","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/we-can-only-save-ourselves-9780062996145","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}