Flan Parker’s curious nature has translated into a thriving resale business. The secret of her success: unique and everyday treasures bought from the auctions of forgotten and abandoned storage units.
When Flan secures the winning bid on a box filled only with an address and a note inside bearing the word “yes,” she sets out to discover the source of this mysterious message and its meaning.
Armed with a well-worn copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that she turns to for guidance and solace, Flan becomes determined to find the “yes” in her own life. It is an inward journey with outward surprises. When her search draws her toward her Afghan neighbor, convinced that a world of secrets lies beneath the woman’s burqa, Flan’s personal quest unexpectedly enters a more public stage.
“A novel of passion and consequence, identity and accountability. I love the narrator, her children, her wild ride, and this truly American story of getting mad and getting wise.”
—Barbara Kingsolver
“If you doubt that a deadly serious thread–also somehow all but laugh-out-loud funny–can connect the pillage of metal storage units, the fierce devotion of family, the rape of human sensibility, and the pursuit of art, read Self Storage by Gayle Brandeis. Or better yet, just take the hand of its greathearted and deeply bewildered heroine, Flan, and hang on for the ride.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of Cage of Stars
“The personal and the political collide in Gayle Brandeis’s complex and witty new Self Storage. [The] novel illuminates the way we define our loved ones, our neighbors, and ourselves.”
—Amanda Eyre Ward, author of How to Be Lost
“Gayle Brandeis’s marvelous new novel is a rare thing: a story of love, marriage, and friendship that stirs our most tender emotions without manipulation or bathos.”
—Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
“Beautifully written and warmed with wit, this is a bold, brave meditation on both the family and the whole family of man.”
—Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble
“Deftly plotted and engagingly told, Gayle Brandeis’s new novel is a suspenseful, thought-provoking, and inspiring exploration of what it means to be a sensitive and thoughtful human being living in George W. Bush’s America.”
—Adam Langer, author of Crossing California
“The Book of Dead Birds (2003), Brandeis’ debut, won Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize. In her second brisk, covertly trenchant novel, Brandeis manages to weave Walt Whitman, 9/11, and secondhand goods into a provocative story about the nature of one’s self and the intrinsically human need to find meaning in life. Flannery cherishes an old edition of Leaves of Grass, her only bequest from her long-deceased mother. With Whitman as her spiritual guide, she lives hand-to-mouth with her soap-opera-addicted graduate-student husband, high-strung young son, and escape-artist toddler daughter in a Riverside, California, enclave for international scholars. To make ends meet, Flan buys and resells the auctioned-off, memory-laden contents of abandoned self-storage units. As though life isn’t precarious enough, Flan is drawn into a high-stakes drama involving her burka-wearing Afghan neighbor, the target of prejudice and hate crimes. Executing a marvelous narrative sleight of hand, Brandeis uses slyly insouciant humor and irresistible characters to delve into the true significance of neighborliness, advocate for doing the right thing, and celebrate a Whitmanesque embrace of life.”
—Booklist