There’s something really limiting about the genre of chick lit, something very few books in the category ever transcend. Women are ignored or simply not understood by their husbands and lovers; children are so taxing, but also, they are the protagonist’s entire life. Rare is the chick lit novel that doesn’t make its main character some sort of hero who even falls apart in a graceful way.
Self Storage by Gayle Brandeis doesn’t manage to avoid these conventions, but the book is almost well written enough to forgive that. Flan Parker is a 28-year-old mother of two whose husband, Shae, is too busy writing his doctoral thesis to be any good as a husband or father. Her children are lovely but difficult, and one gets the feeling that Flan isn’t the greatest mother. Flan’s own parents are absent, her mother dead and her father estranged. Flan spends her weekends going to actions at self-storage facilities, bidding on the detritus of other people’s lives, sold off when the owner stopped paying for their unit. She resells the items at garage sales and turns a good enough profit to support her family.
Flan is well loved by all her neighbors except for the wary Afghani couple down the block who don’t associate with anyone on the block. Flan finds herself intrigued, and then fascinated by the burqa-clad wife, Sodaba, and through various improbable plot twists, ends up helping her after racial tensions start to boil over.
Flan’s life comes to a screeching halt when her two-year-old daughter is injured, and the dynamics of her family shift. Shae, who had spent the previous several months camped on the sofa watching soap operas, kicks into high gear, staying by their daughter’s side, while Flan drifts around trying to get a handle on herself. Somehow Shae believes this makes him the good parent, even considering his previous role in the family (whiny, overindulged artist who couldn’t be bothered to watch the kids). Suddenly he’s father of the year, and Flan is left to wander around feeling sorry for herself and wondering what it would be like to French kiss almost everyone she comes across.
Flan regains a sense of confidence through helping others, reading her mother’s copy of Leaves of Grass and befriending an old artist lady, Julia, whose life Flan stumbles into through her auctions. Along the way, life regains meaning and Flan finds reasons to go on.
By the end of the book, marital harmony is somewhat restored, Sodaba is safely tucked away from the Muslim-haters, and Flan and Co. are off on an adventure to the great unknown, Cleveland. Whatever issues kept Flan from being perfectly happy are resolved enough (although it’s hard to see how) that she’s ready to face the future and get past whatever’s been holding her back. All these changes seem contrived. We’re supposed to believe that, in the space of a couple weeks, everything turned around enough that Shae and Flan’s marriage seems whole again, the kids will behave, a decade-long estrangement healed and Flan’s attitude adjusted.
Still, there’s a lot of good in Self Storage. Brandeis writes well, even if her story is a bit far-fetched. It’s the great failing of chick lit that it tries to get magical, extraordinary stories out of lives just like ours that get upturned by unusual events. There can be books about women that are not chick lit. Perhaps if Brandeis had been more conscious of staying away from these conventions, her book would seem more valid. As it is, Self Storage feels formulaic and a bit manipulative. It’s not a bad book by any means, but it isn’t anything very special, either. Which is sad, because the character of Flan-disenchanted wife, bad mother, secret sex fiend-is pretty interesting, and it’s only the twists and turns of the story that make this book less than great. If Flan was just allowed to have a story, without being forced to jump through the plot-hoops that Brandeis has crafted for her, this might have been a very good book indeed.