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    No One Is Coming to Save Us: A Novel
    No One Is Coming to Save Us: A Novel
    No One Is Coming to Save Us: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    No One Is Coming to Save Us: A Novel

    Written by Stephanie Powell Watts

    Narrated by Janina Edwards

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    JJ Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina, to build his dream house and to pursue his high school sweetheart, Ava. But as he reenters his former world, where factories are in decline and the legacy of Jim Crow is still felt, he’s startled to find that the people he once knew and loved have changed just as much as he has. Ava is now married and desperate for a baby, though she can’t seem to carry one to term. Her husband, Henry, has grown distant, frustrated by the demise of the furniture industry, which has outsourced to China and stripped the area of jobs. Ava’s mother, Sylvia, caters to and meddles with the lives of those around her, trying to fill the void left by her absent son. And Don, Sylvia’s unworthy but charming husband, just won’t stop hanging around.

    JJ’s return—and his plans to build a huge mansion overlooking Pinewood and woo Ava—not only unsettles their family, but stirs up the entire town. The ostentatious wealth that JJ has attained forces everyone to consider the cards they’ve been dealt, what more they want and deserve, and how they might go about getting it. Can they reorient their lives to align with their wishes rather than their current realities? Or are they all already resigned to the rhythms of the particular lives they lead?

    No One Is Coming to Save Us

    is a revelatory debut from an insightful voice: with echoes of The Great Gatsby it is an arresting and powerful novel about an extended African American family and their colliding visions of the American Dream. In evocative prose, Stephanie Powell Watts has crafted a full and stunning portrait that combines a universally resonant story with an intimate glimpse into the hearts of one family.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 4, 2017
    ISBN9780062660619

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    Reviews for No One Is Coming to Save Us

    3/5

    98 ratings13 reviews

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    • 3/5
      There were only pockets of content that held my attention. The description and the actual story really did not parallel themselves to me. I finished the book, but the glee I felt was because I was so ready to be done with it...not the storyline.
    • 2/5
      So this book is being advertised as a retelling of The Great Gatsby but updated to be about a modern black family in the south. Yeah, that doesn't really come across and feels more like an afterthought added to the story to attempt to make this book more interesting than it was. The book isn't horrible and I at least enjoyed it enough to read it through, but the stories about the different characters felt pieced together without anything being related and at the end many of them are abruptly ended without any kind of big conflict or turning point. The dialogue is pretty bad and unrealistic and the characters are all one dimensional so you don't really care about them. There are grammar errors and typos throughout the book that are distracting. This book lacked a good thorough look through by an editor and reads more like a concept of a interesting novel.
    • 4/5
      Moving, enjoyable story about the family you have and the family you choose- even when life doesn't go as planned. I loved Ava and Sylvia and their relationship, and the people around them with all their complications. It's a warm and kind-hearted story about making your life your own.
    • 4/5
      This novel centers on an African-American family in a small town in North Carolina, and primarily on the aging Sylvia and her daughter Ava, who is dealing with infertility, a philandering husband, and the return to town of her childhood best friend/old flame after a long absence.My feelings about this one are so mixed that it's actually kind of hard to articulate them. There is certainly quite a bit here to like. Sylvia is a good character, complex and interesting. Ava was less so to me, but there were times when Watts made me feel for her pretty effectively. And there are some genuinely insightful moments, about all kinds of things: family relationships and those between men and women, aging, regrets, class and race and sex, the human experience in general and that of black women in particular.And yet, there was just something about the writing here that I struggled with, and I can't even entirely put my finger on what it is. Or rather, I can identify some of it: The way it sometimes randomly changes POV for a few sentences or a few pages (a style some people can pull off, but which usually just really irritates me, and mostly did here). The way it also sometimes slips into flashback without warning in a way that can be briefly confusing. The way the characters sometimes slip out of realistic-sounding dialog and start speaking more in Meaningful Abstractions. Actually, now that I look at that list, maybe that's explanation enough. I don't know. What I do know is that for a while in the middle, I was absorbed enough in these people's lives to be reasonably happy with it, anyway, but by the end I was feeling impatient and a little unsatisfied.
    • 2/5
      It isn't too often that I can't get through a book, but this is one that I gave up on. I found nothing compelling about the plot or characters.
    • 3/5
      Touted as a black Great Gatsby, which I think was an unfair marketing gimmick. The author sets up interesting tensions among the characters, and the mother-daughter relationships are far more interesting than the allure of the nouveau-riche young male character.
    • 2/5
      Oh, the duty of reading a book that provides no joy or entertainment. That sad dilemma engulfs No One Is Coming to Save Us by Stephanie Powell Watts. I listened to the audio book as the reader attempted to alter her voice for different characters, but only succeeded in confusing this listener as to what was being said. Watts premise of the lives of African Americans in a small North Carolina community could have presented enlightenment, but only seemed to be whining. The men in the story showed weakness and lack of drive, and the women ruled the roost.
    • 2/5
      So this book is being advertised as a retelling of The Great Gatsby but updated to be about a modern black family in the south. Yeah, that doesn't really come across and feels more like an afterthought added to the story to attempt to make this book more interesting than it was. The book isn't horrible and I at least enjoyed it enough to read it through, but the stories about the different characters felt pieced together without anything being related and at the end many of them are abruptly ended without any kind of big conflict or turning point. The dialogue is pretty bad and unrealistic and the characters are all one dimensional so you don't really care about them. There are grammar errors and typos throughout the book that are distracting. This book lacked a good thorough look through by an editor and reads more like a concept of a interesting novel.
    • 2/5
      I felt no connection to any of the characters in this book and found the story to be boring. I can't even think of another thing to say - that's how apathetic I feel about it.
    • 4/5
      Dare I say I liked this retelling better than the original Great Gatsby? (I hear the mob forming now to eviscerate me for admitting to this.) It could be that the setting is contemporary, but I felt the characters in this book were easier to relate to and all of their stories evoked the struggles and challenges of the lives we live today. I applaud the author for tackling this tale and giving an old classic a healthy twist. I'm excited to see what's next for this author!
    • 5/5
      The title is untrue. Someone (or someones) does arrive, but not until Sylvia, daughter Ava, son Devon, and son-from-another-mother JJ have just about run out of time and will. They all live in a small, dying Southern town, as the one restaurant that wouldn't serve them for most of its existence finally goes dark. Ava is a successful bank loan officer, and her mother Sylvia helps an incarcerated man who dialed her number accidentally, but it's all stagnant until JJ returns after a long absence and builds a mansion as bait for the unhappily married Ava. Critics have made comparisons to Gatsby, but no one ever heard from Gatsby's mom! Told from Sylvia's and Ava's PoV, this is a poignant portrait of lives half finished before they even began. The mysterious Devon's story is unpeeled slowly and carefully. Very well written, especially the internal voices.
    • 3/5
      After an absence of many years, JJ Ferguson returns home to Pinewood, North Carolina. Against the odds, he has plenty of money and builds a huge house in pursuit of his childhood sweetheart, Ava. However, JJ hasn't realized that people have moved on. Ava is now married to a philanderer who works at a struggling furniture plant. A successful bank manager, Ava wants the one thing she cannot seem to obtain - a child of her own. Ava's inability to carry a pregnancy to term depresses her, and she leans on her mother, Sylvia, for support. Sylvia remembers clearly when Pinewood was segregated and she was dirt poor. Sylvia is married to Don, who carries on extra-marital affairs without trying to disguise them. Sylvia longs for her lost son, Devon, and finds comfort in telephone conversations with a young prisoner.I wanted to really like this book, but it was a slow read. There is too little action and story and plot. Parts of the book are confusing as well. It does contain some good insights, but it is bogged down in narrative and very little plot.
    • 4/5
      This is blurbed as a new and updated Great Gatsby, but let me start by saying the links to that classic are tenuous at best, in my opinion virtually non existent. At first I was reading this and trying to find the connection, disappointed when I couldn't and then realized I was doing a huge disservice to this book, so I pit it aside for a night and the next day started it over, with no preconceived notions. What I found was a wonderful story in its own right. A depressed, mostly black town in South Carolina, the main employer the furniture factory now closed as are many businesses that depended on the money people earned from their jobs. Sylvia and Ava, mother and daughter are the two main characters and they are wonderfully fleshed out, real but with flaws like all of us. Sylvia, has had much tragedy in her past, wants to be seen, needed, Ava nearing forty wants nothing more than her own child. They are lucky in that they both have decent jobs, though no one really gets ahead financially in this town. Though they are lucky in their employment, they are not so lucky in their marriages. When JJ, comes back to town, now building a bog house on the hill, he appears successful to the others in town, but all he wants is Ava. The dialogue in this novel is fantastic, free flowing and natural, this young author has a talent for this that many more accomplished authors lack. One of the hardest elements of writing or so I believe. These two women, and the men surrounding them are all in search of the American dream, and how they come to terms with their wants as opposed to their reality, is the story. And a fine one it is, I became invested in their lives, admired them at times, wanted to shake them at others, all signs of a very good book. So my advice is read this, but pay no attention to the blurb or comparisons. This is a young author with an amazing amount of talent, one I am sure we will see more of in the near future.ARC from publisher.