Gayle Brandeis's "Self Storage," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Gayle Brandeis's Self Storage.

Brandeis's entry opens:

The day after I received the email asking me to participate in this blog, I received an email from a producer asking if my novel Self Storage had been optioned yet. The timing still makes me smile—it's almost as if the invitation to cast my book ushered in the possibility of a real movie. I know the film world is just as unpredictable and uncertain as the publishing world, if not more so, so who knows if an adaptation will actually come to light, but it's great fun to dream about the potential cast.

The main character of Self Storage is Flan Parker, a young mother who goes to self storage auctions and sells the winnings at yard sales in her family student housing community at the University of California in Riverside. Flan is a searcher, guided by Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," and a bit of a daydreamer. Her life is forever altered when her path collides with Sodaba's, her Afghan neighbor who wears a full burqa. I promised my friend Dewi Faulkner (doesn't she have the greatest name?) the role of Flan if the book were ever to make it to the screen, but in the event that Dewi is unavailable, I can easily picture a couple of other actors as Flan: Maggie Gyllenhaal would bring a wonderful wistfulness to the role, and Mary Lynn Rajskub would capture both Flan's humor and her frustration. As young mothers themselves (in Mary Lynn Rajskub's case, a young mother-to-be), I think they would connect with Flan's heart. [read on]

Read an excerpt from Self Storage.

Among the early praise for Self Storage:

“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

Learn more about Gayle Brandeis and Self Storage at her website, at her blog, or at one of her MySpace pages or the other.

The Page 69 Test: Self Storage.

My Book, The Movie: Self Storage.

--Marshal Zeringue