What You Have Left

What You Have Left is like a perfect pop song. The kind that you crank up on a bright summer day as you roll down the windows, step on the gas, and see what that baby can do. Like those summertime songs, this book is infectious, with no fatty in the patty. The characters are vividly drawn, but the prose is so smooth as to be invisible. It's like I didn't read the story at all; I mainlined it. But don't confuse "pop" with "simple." This book is smart. Complex as the human heart. And that's Will Allison's best trick. Making this whole writing game seem easy as ice cream. THE book of the summer.

Having just finished Will Allison's debut What You Have Left, I was left with a feeling of loss myself. A sliver of a novel, it went by all too quickly, and this adds to the thematic wallop of the story, as loss after loss plays its way through the consciousnesses of the well-wrought and reflective characters. I suppose, on the good foot, the brevity invites re-reading, but I think I'll wait a bit so as not to dillute the delicious feeling of regret left by the novel's first reading. The regret palpable in the story is complicated by a sensitive series of portrayals of what it's like to love damaged and/or unavailable people--a feeling familiar to any potential reader (read: any human), at once accessible and wistfully distant. Mr. Allison knows his characters so well that even the most casual comment or gesture adds to the accretion of regret which locks together stories which take place over the span of almost forty years in South Carolina. While the characters are all members of the same family, more or less, it is the hurt and loss which binds them, not only to their own relatives, but more significantly, to the present paths which inspire their present behaviors. The characters are huge without overstatement, and the prose is so insightful as to hurt. I'll be impatient, no doubt, waiting for Mr. Allison's second novel. As I finished the book, I was reminded of other debuts--McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City and Foer's Everything's Illuminated. The books are radically different in content, but they crackle with the clear precision and promise of the announcement of a major talent. While McInerney's debut seems dated now, I can't imagine Mr. Allison's will twenty or a hundred and twenty years from now. Do yourself a favor and read it; I'd bet in retrospect, you'll feel as if you were at the Kingdome on May 29th, 1995. Except Allison goes five for five.

This small book (only 200 some pages) was crafted with care. You can tell that the author has sweated and suffered over every single word. It's almost perfect. Allison's debut novel serves notice of a new literary star among us. It's the story of a woman's search for her lost father. She's really looking for herself. Along the way, she rediscovers the mother that she cannot reclaim, only reconsider. There are some mighty fine characters on the side but this book belongs to the daughter, Holly, and her dad, Wylie. The author has chosen to employ a cross-cutting of chapters that zooms back and forth in time through the viewpoints of several characters. It's a bold tactic that really adds to the effect of this supple, slyly witty concoction. Fans of coming of age epics, NASCAR, and South Carolina need to turn their friends on to this one. I predict big things for Will Allison. Now, if he could only write faster! Just kidding. The next book will be well worth the wait.

Allison's emotionally powerful novel takes its characters through difficult ethical questions: what should you do when your beloved grandfather wants to commit suicide; what should you do when you think you've accidentally killed someone; how do you deal with your addiction and its effect on your family; how do you deal with your spouse's equally destructive addiction; how can you achieve emotional closure without seeking revenge? The questions stay with you beyond the page, so fully are the characters and their problems realized. By the end, you've gone through four generations and in the process explored with each character what ultimately is important in a life - the "what you have left" of the title. A very fine and rich book.

Holly's mother is dead. Holly is "sentenced to life on (her) grandfather's dairy farm" in South Carolina. Her father disappears. Then he's back. Sound interesting? I haven't yet told you about NASCAR, Alzheimer's disease, video poker, the Confederate flag . . . And all that doesn't even account for the brave juxtapositions of time and character offered by the novel's unusual structure, nor the well-made, elegant language of the telling, nor (most importantly) what new light Allison sheds on "the human heart itself." What You Have Left is a remarkable debut novel. I feel lucky to have found it.