The Saver

By Edeet Ravel

Seventeen-year-old Fern has not had many breaks in life. She struggles at school and lives with her mother in a roach-infested apartment. Then, suddenly, her mother has a heart attack and dies, and Fern is devastated. But she's a survivor, and she's not afraid of hard work. Sidestepping social services, she quits school and sets out to look after herself.

With a little luck and ingenuity and a lot of determination, she manages to live rent-free by becoming a janitor in a crummy apartment building. When she runs out of toothpaste she gets freebies from dentists' offices. Then she tries to juggle two other shift jobs, including one in a restaurant kitchen, so she has access to leftover food. But despite her resourcefulness and resolve, the exhaustion and stress eventually take their toll, until Fern discovers that she is not really on her own after all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Release date: Sep 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781554980437

Edeet Ravel

EDEET RAVEL is an award-winning author of books for both young readers and adults. Her YA novel, Held, was nominated for the CLA Young Adult Book Award and the Arthur Ellis Crime Award, and her YA novel, The Saver, has been adapted for film and received awards around the world. Her novels for adults have won the Hugh MacLennan Prize and the Jewish Book Award and have been nominated for the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize. Edeet was born on an Israeli kibbutz and holds a PhD in Jewish Studies from McGill University.

Book preview

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Reviews for The Saver

[5eva5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked this up because I absolutely love Ravel's Tel Aviv trilogy and was hoping the magic of those books would carry over to her YA writing, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. The premise was really interesting - how does a 17-year-old take care of herself without any help in the world? - but the story doesn't quite manage to relay the feelings of the characters and so I found myself not caring about them. I still can't figure out why Fern is so obsessed with saving money that she lies and steals in order to put several hundred dollars a month into a savings account rather than dealing with her day-to-day life. The redeeming factor is to see how Fern goes from totally alone in the world to having friends, but it's not a huge denouement in that anyone who has a workplace will have colleagues. It's a fast read, but in the end, not satisfying.