“Quietly wonderful...a rare novel. Ella [is] an unforgettable main character. Ms. Savage stages an inquiry into the conundrum of goodness in an age that does so little to reward it, yet needs it desperately. Where, she wonders, do you draw a line between selflessness and servility? The questions deepen in profundity and emotional power.... Say Say Say will likely make you cry, but in [this] novel such responses feel clean and ennobling, free from manipulation. It is a book written for the better angels of our nature. ‘Wasn’t there beauty in the practice of love and the roll and sweep of it?’ Ella thinks. Yes yes yes.” (Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal) 

“Riveting, subversive.... Familial tensions feed Ella's richly articulate consciousness [in this] meditation on work, loss, intimacy, and desire." (Ottessa Moshfegh, GQ) 

“Vivid; quietly radical - a wise, understated novel exploring the thoughts and feelings of a young carer as she steps into the crucible of other people’s suffering. The work is ‘pink collar’; the labor emotional and well as physical. Say Say Say is an intensely serious and careful book, which grapples with an unfashionable subject: the drive to be a good person, while wittily weighing human fallibility. The novel is particularly interesting about sexual politics and the romantic self: as a woke, young bisexual woman, Ella knows the effects of living in a patriarchy, but doesn’t know how to circumvent the damage. In the novel’s open-eyed, open-hearted curiosity, it illuminates both the intimate dramas usually hidden behind closed doors, and the shifting mysteries of personality and relationship.” (Justine Jordan, The Guardian)