It is not hard to imagine someone like Edna, who moves invisibly through a culture that has no time for the old woman ripping the crossword puzzle out of the free newspaper at Starbucks. Savage's skill is in creating complex first-person characters using nothing but their own voice. As improbable as it sounds, "Firmin" was narrated by a charming, erudite rat — well-read because he had gnawed his way through literature's great works — with a fondness for porn and Ginger Rogers. Edna's voice, too, is unique and hypnotic, although it is full of evasions and omissions. She tells a difficult story: It is cold and critical, a fading picture in place of memory.
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Book review: 'Glass' by Sam Savage
In 'Glass' by Sam Savage, a poor elderly woman writes of her life in elliptical bits and pieces, making for an intriguing story.
"I can see from my expression that I was happy at those moments, I have no doubt that I was happy," she writes, "but I am unable to refeel the happiness. The fact is, I cannot imagine it." Typically, memoir gives us the emotional high points, but Savage's Edna inverts that: She writes loneliness and tedium, the bits and pieces that are hard to look at, or that typically wind up on the cutting room floor.
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