Willing

A novel about high-end prostitution that turns into a story about relationships, "Willing" is a semi-dark but touching gem. File Scott Spencer under consistent--original, witty, dead on. A friend prompted me to read "Men in Black" and "A Ship Made of Paper" and I've never been sorry picking up a Spencer book. As other reviewers have pointed out, the writing style is intoxicating. Avery Jankowsky is a three-dimensional character, self-aware and a keen observer. One man has "scimitar sideburns." The bar of soap leaps from his hand like "like a toad." A sink's faucets issue a "rodenty squeak." A piece of paper is slipped under Avery's hotel door and when it wakes him up, he thinks: "I don't know if I have ever been jolted out of sleep by such crumbs from the sonic table." Spencer slips these little slices of poetry into the prose like...like what? I'd love to what he'd come up with. They are gifts. There is energy in his metaphors but they are not overdone. He drips them out with a fine sense of timing, almost like a great stand-up comic. The rhythm of his writing and the things he observes are equally intoxicating. There are a few R-rated sections as the book moves among the three northern European, the stops on a high-end (very high end) tour for men willing to pay for the most beautiful women in the world. Avery refers to the exchange of money for sex as the "grand presumption." His traveling companions are sharply drawn and so are the women Avery encounters. It helps that Avery agonizes about his feelings about each transaction and their whole purpose, helps even more that he has ethical quandaries as a writer, too--he's actually there to develop a book on the tour and the business. The challenges for Avery are coming to terms with the variety of emotions as he tries to put the tour in terms his heart and his head can grasp. In the end, "Willing" is about family and friendships, what's for sale (and what's not). Good stuff all the way through.

I was surprised to see negative reviews of this book, which I found absolutely delightful. It looks like prior novels had created expectations that were disappointed. This is the first Scott Spencer novel that I have read. I was just looking for entertainment, but I was immediately struck by the elegant prose. Every so often, Spencer would state something so perfectly, like the "Sisyphean task of overcoming my childhood." How well put! What was not to like about the ending? I think people were taking this story too seriously.

If I had to express one thing about this book it would be: Wow, this man can write! By why stop there? I heard Scott Spencer on my car's radio the other day when tuned to NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and even though I arrived at my destination, I stayed seated with my seatbelt in place just to hear him read more excerpts from this unusual story, Willing. This is a book that goes by quickly, even though the structure (a complete lack of dialog punctuation) requires you to read slowly. A writer's writer, Spencer is a master of description and has a keen wit filled with gritty, streetwise originality. From the initial description of his narrator, Avery Jankowsky, to every curious character leading up to and embarking upon an around the world sex tour, which is the heart of this dark tale, possibly the only thing short-changed is the answer to the question, who was the man doing pushups in room 420 of the Hotel Christofer? Other than that, this story holds nothing back. Avery is a freelance writer in his late 30s, who has just discovered his young girlfriend has been unfaithful. Already damaged by being raised by four fathers and a self-centered mother, he accepts an opportunity presented by his Uncle Ezra to sleep with beautiful women in a series of Nordic countries. It's a $135,000 gift, which leads to a book opportunity that will have enormous financial benefits--thus solving his previous fate of being poor. As if that were the basis of all his problems. As the trip unfolds, Avery learns there is a very high price to pay for the decisions he's made. "Even the milk from our mother's breast comes with a bill that we are eventually meant to pay." And his mother, Naomi, makes this all very clear. Avery tries to justify his lapse into debauchery by telling himself things like (the headline of this review), "you can't always care about what you do and how you behave;" however, it's Naomi who shows him the exact opposite is true. This is excellent work and I give it my highest recommendation. Michele Cozzens is the author of It's Not Your Mother's Bridge Club

I've waited five years since "A Ship Made of Paper" for the next Scott Spencer novel. Willing does not disappoint! Yes, it's about a international sex tour, but the sub plot is actually much more intimate. How well can a person know themselves and still be completely ignorant of what they're capable of? That's what Avery is about to find out as he is booked on a tour of "pleasure" that is filled with discovery, pain, surprise and being kicked hard in the soul. The prose is hands down Scott Spencer at his best, it's good enough to make your toes curl. Willing is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, light and dark, comforting and discomforting. No one alive writes quite like Scott- he remains on his A game. The writing in Willing will probably only be topped when Scott writes his next book. Let the waiting begin again......

Oh, boy. I'd thought that novels like this had disappeared entirely from the landscape. Scott Spencer, truly one of our greatest living novelists, returns in full literary glory with "Willing." Spencer writes with a direct line from the heart and the head to the page, with no static in between. At his best, he's a marvel, a master of phrase and construction. His writing is so natural--free of the constraints of form, of the demands on writers today to conform to a standard--that it's almost too good to be true. I'll admit: I'm a fan. Have been since reading the first sentence of "Endless Love" nearly 20 years ago (though "Preservation Hall" to me was a better novel, more touching and heartbreaking). "Waking the Dead" carried that sentiment, that clear, uncluttered, unprocessed prose. Then I felt a change had occurred. With "Men In Black" and even the marvelous "A Ship Made of Paper," I felt that Spencer was trying a bit too hard to write for an editor, an audience, to create a more plot-friendly narrative. The goodies were still there; the gem-precious turns of phrase that haunt me and stick in my brain like a caraway seed (i.e. "...the isometrics of his own bad temper). And so I thought the free-form novel was gone; the idea that a writer could create what came out of his brain and see it through to publication without worry that it fits the market or current tastes. But with "Willing" we have a writer who just writes, and what a joy it is. Spencer, at his best, opens up his truest self and invites us in for a look. "Willing" is the novel in Blu-Ray, in Hi-Def. I don't know of any other novelist who could pull it off today. Even Richard Price, another of my favorites (see my review of "Lush Life"), seems to be turning away from his best self in order to please. But enough. Buy "Willing" and spend a magical weekend reading. It may be the last chance any of us gets at the novel--the true novel--for a long time.