What do you think?
Rate this book
Willing
Hailed as "the contemporary American master of the love story" ( Publishers Weekly ), bestselling author Scott Spencer takes us on a psychologically intense—and brilliantly funny—journey inside the world of international sex tourism. Avery Jankowsky is a thirty-seven-year-old Manhattan writer scraping by on freelance assignments. Despite his lack of ambition, and very much to his own surprise, he has won the affections of Deirdre, a Columbia grad student many years his junior. But when Deirdre tells him that she has been having an affair, Avery's world is shattered. Beside himself with jealousy and grief, Avery heads across town to meet his uncle Ezra for their monthly lunch date. Ezra senses his nephew's fragile emotional state and makes a startling Avery should use his tickets to an all-expenses-paid international sex tour. Sensing a white-hot book idea (and a chance to get back at Deirdre), Avery agrees to go as an undercover journalist. As the tour bounces from one Nordic country to another, Avery and his fellow travelers—most of them wealthy and accomplished—descend ever deeper into a blinding world that is equal parts hilarity and nightmare, until Avery suddenly finds himself face-to-face with the one person he never expected to see. A two-time National Book Award finalist, Spencer has already given us some of the most remarkable tales of love and passion in contemporary American fiction. Willing is at once a lighter and a darker performance, a startling tour de force that explores the limits of male restraint, the intoxications of privilege, the maddening dangers of freedom, and the knockdown, drag-out fight between our instincts and our better natures.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2008
9 people are currently reading
286 people want to read
About the author
Scott Spencer
15 books254 followersScott Spencer (b. 1945) is the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of ten novels, including Endless Love and A Ship Made of Paper, both of which have been nominated for the National Book Award. Two of his books, Endless Love and Waking the Dead, have been adapted into films.
He has taught at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, and Williams College, and Bard College's Bard Prison Initiative. Spencer is an alumnus of Roosevelt University. In 2004, he was the recipient of a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship. For the past twenty years, he has lived in a small town in upstate New York.
Spencer has also worked as a journalist. He has published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, GQ, O, The Oprah Magazine, and he is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone.
He has taught at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, and Williams College, and Bard College's Bard Prison Initiative. Spencer is an alumnus of Roosevelt University. In 2004, he was the recipient of a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship. For the past twenty years, he has lived in a small town in upstate New York.
Spencer has also worked as a journalist. He has published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, GQ, O, The Oprah Magazine, and he is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
March 25, 2008
“You can’t always care about what you do, and how you behave.”
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 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 the hotel room? Other than that, this story holds nothing back. Streetwise
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.
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 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 the hotel room? Other than that, this story holds nothing back. Streetwise
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.
May 25, 2009
Avery Jankowsky is a middle-aged, free-lance writer whose world is upended when his younger lover informs him that she has had an affair. To help him move on, a generous uncle offers him a spot on a high-end Scandinavian sex tour. Though Avery's original intent is to participate in the tour only as a detached undercover journalist, it's not long before he is swept up in a riptide of events well beyond his emotional control.
Willing got off to a promising start for me. Spencer is a skilled wordsmith who rewards his readers with beautiful turns of phrase. I was quickly pulled into the story and grew sympathetic to Avery's muddled attempts to cope with the affair. I was also intrigued by Avery's first flirtations with the paid sex industry; the inner battle between his idealistic beliefs and the forces of rationalization was fascinating. These things kept my interest level high enough that I was willing to overlook the fact that Spencer dispensed with the conventions of normal dialogue and crammed his characters' verbal exchanges into quoteless, run-on paragraphs that made the book distractingly hard to read at times.
Unfortunately, the story began to fall apart for me as soon as the sex tour began. Part of this stemmed from Avery making an early choice to send a life-altering e-mail that struck me as inexplicably out of character. Most of it, however, came from the fact that he is primarily passive in his response to the unfolding events. The only exceptions seemed to be driven more by primal emotion and sleep deprivation than actual growth as a person. This made him significantly less interesting to me as the book wore on. By end of the story, I no longer cared enough about Avery to be upset that Spencer ended his story with some disturbingly large questions unanswered.
This was an unfortunate disappointment given the promising start. I've noticed, however, that some of Spencer's fans have commented that this is not one of his best. Given the strengths that he clearly has as a writer, I would be interested to check out some of his other work.
Willing got off to a promising start for me. Spencer is a skilled wordsmith who rewards his readers with beautiful turns of phrase. I was quickly pulled into the story and grew sympathetic to Avery's muddled attempts to cope with the affair. I was also intrigued by Avery's first flirtations with the paid sex industry; the inner battle between his idealistic beliefs and the forces of rationalization was fascinating. These things kept my interest level high enough that I was willing to overlook the fact that Spencer dispensed with the conventions of normal dialogue and crammed his characters' verbal exchanges into quoteless, run-on paragraphs that made the book distractingly hard to read at times.
Unfortunately, the story began to fall apart for me as soon as the sex tour began. Part of this stemmed from Avery making an early choice to send a life-altering e-mail that struck me as inexplicably out of character. Most of it, however, came from the fact that he is primarily passive in his response to the unfolding events. The only exceptions seemed to be driven more by primal emotion and sleep deprivation than actual growth as a person. This made him significantly less interesting to me as the book wore on. By end of the story, I no longer cared enough about Avery to be upset that Spencer ended his story with some disturbingly large questions unanswered.
This was an unfortunate disappointment given the promising start. I've noticed, however, that some of Spencer's fans have commented that this is not one of his best. Given the strengths that he clearly has as a writer, I would be interested to check out some of his other work.
March 28, 2008
Scott Spencer is at his best when he writes about love/desire that grows exponentially until it becomes destructive to both lovers and the entire world around them. In that sphere, he is a master - though I am not one to expect a writer to be a one-trick pony.
I was thrilled to find that he had a new book out and, while reading Willing, I was thoroughly engrossed... But not really enjoying it. To me, it read like a draft of something that started out as one idea (i.e. a guy who is messed up emotionally because his mother married four times), took off in another, more compelling direction (a round-the-world sex tour), and somehow tried to maintain its focus on the former but lost most of its appeal in the process. The characters were not very likable, plot twists were not terribly exciting, and if he'd mentioned his four fathers one more time I would have puked. Also, from a man who has written some of the most graphic sex scenes in literature, could he really not go into any detail about an orgy with a few Scandinavian hookers? Seriously.
I love Scott Spencer, but this wasn't one of his best.
I was thrilled to find that he had a new book out and, while reading Willing, I was thoroughly engrossed... But not really enjoying it. To me, it read like a draft of something that started out as one idea (i.e. a guy who is messed up emotionally because his mother married four times), took off in another, more compelling direction (a round-the-world sex tour), and somehow tried to maintain its focus on the former but lost most of its appeal in the process. The characters were not very likable, plot twists were not terribly exciting, and if he'd mentioned his four fathers one more time I would have puked. Also, from a man who has written some of the most graphic sex scenes in literature, could he really not go into any detail about an orgy with a few Scandinavian hookers? Seriously.
I love Scott Spencer, but this wasn't one of his best.
February 6, 2017
This book falls so short of what it purports to deliver that it is practically useless to try and enumerate the ways. I'll just hit the main highlights, IMHO:
- the book is about an "Around the World Sex Tour" that the protagonist, Avery Jankowsky goes on as some sort of vague punishment for his ex-girlfriend - she doesn't want me? I'll PAY women to have sex with me, that'll show her how desirable I am! - and the tour is only scheduled to go to Eastern Europe. Meanwhile it is constantly referred to as an "Around the WORLD Sex Tour" by all characters throughout the book.
- after only going to 3 countries from "around the world," the protagonist's mother shows up, having flown in from Costa Rica because she was worried about him. He had called her from the emergency room a few days before leaving on his trip, himself, he called her himself, and she decided that it was imperative for her to be by his side, even if that meant following the sex tour from country to country. She flew from Costa Rica to NYC, found her son gone, then flew to Oslo and Reykjavik looking for him. And the reasoning that she gave for not just patiently waiting in New York for him to return was that a hotel would be "too expensive." I won't even get into the weird mommy issues that the author must have to imagine one's mother chasing you around Eastern Europe while you have sex with random women.
- the author, Spencer, relies far too heavily on similes to relate the scene, "the river was like a string of diamonds," for example. These get wearisome early, not only because he is unoriginal in his comparisons - making the leap from an ice-covered anything to diamonds is not too difficult - but by using similes one narrows the field of understanding for a reader. They don't get to do any work in imagining on their own, the river is like diamonds. Next. Compare this to an esteemed writer, such as when Hemingway repetitiously uses the word "good" to describe things in a cafe. Hemingway is releasing the reader from the constraints of his vision and allowing them to impose more of what a "good wine" would taste like, what a "good" jacket would feel like, and how a "good" conversation would go.
- I don't write professionally for a magazine, but the bidding war over Jankowsky's tell-all book on the sex tour seems ridiculous to even me. The publishing company offers him $35K at 3 pm and when he doesn't respond by 4 pm they raise it to $40K? Then, if he doesn't say yes or no by 5 pm the offer is off the table?
- Finally, it really irritated me that Spencer felt the need to account for every minute of the characters' lives in real time. It didn't seem like a construct he contemplated before writing, it felt more like he thought we wouldn't understand what happened if the characters ate lunch and then magically it was 6 hours later. We were stuck on the same itinerary as all the pathetic johns in the book, replete with boring conversations and waiting interminably at the airport. The few times at the end, where I guess he was nearing the page count he wanted, Spencer had the protagonist lose a few hours here and there and e-v-e-r-y time, it started with, "The next thing I knew... we were outside the restaurant." "The next thing I knew....we had climbed up 3 flights of stairs."
The next thing I knew, any subsequent books by Spencer I had on my reading list were erased.
- the book is about an "Around the World Sex Tour" that the protagonist, Avery Jankowsky goes on as some sort of vague punishment for his ex-girlfriend - she doesn't want me? I'll PAY women to have sex with me, that'll show her how desirable I am! - and the tour is only scheduled to go to Eastern Europe. Meanwhile it is constantly referred to as an "Around the WORLD Sex Tour" by all characters throughout the book.
- after only going to 3 countries from "around the world," the protagonist's mother shows up, having flown in from Costa Rica because she was worried about him. He had called her from the emergency room a few days before leaving on his trip, himself, he called her himself, and she decided that it was imperative for her to be by his side, even if that meant following the sex tour from country to country. She flew from Costa Rica to NYC, found her son gone, then flew to Oslo and Reykjavik looking for him. And the reasoning that she gave for not just patiently waiting in New York for him to return was that a hotel would be "too expensive." I won't even get into the weird mommy issues that the author must have to imagine one's mother chasing you around Eastern Europe while you have sex with random women.
- the author, Spencer, relies far too heavily on similes to relate the scene, "the river was like a string of diamonds," for example. These get wearisome early, not only because he is unoriginal in his comparisons - making the leap from an ice-covered anything to diamonds is not too difficult - but by using similes one narrows the field of understanding for a reader. They don't get to do any work in imagining on their own, the river is like diamonds. Next. Compare this to an esteemed writer, such as when Hemingway repetitiously uses the word "good" to describe things in a cafe. Hemingway is releasing the reader from the constraints of his vision and allowing them to impose more of what a "good wine" would taste like, what a "good" jacket would feel like, and how a "good" conversation would go.
- I don't write professionally for a magazine, but the bidding war over Jankowsky's tell-all book on the sex tour seems ridiculous to even me. The publishing company offers him $35K at 3 pm and when he doesn't respond by 4 pm they raise it to $40K? Then, if he doesn't say yes or no by 5 pm the offer is off the table?
- Finally, it really irritated me that Spencer felt the need to account for every minute of the characters' lives in real time. It didn't seem like a construct he contemplated before writing, it felt more like he thought we wouldn't understand what happened if the characters ate lunch and then magically it was 6 hours later. We were stuck on the same itinerary as all the pathetic johns in the book, replete with boring conversations and waiting interminably at the airport. The few times at the end, where I guess he was nearing the page count he wanted, Spencer had the protagonist lose a few hours here and there and e-v-e-r-y time, it started with, "The next thing I knew... we were outside the restaurant." "The next thing I knew....we had climbed up 3 flights of stairs."
The next thing I knew, any subsequent books by Spencer I had on my reading list were erased.
July 19, 2008
Scott Spencer is such a terrific writer, I'd been waiting a long time to read this book, and I wanted to do it slowly, savouring all the descriptions and obsession.
The book has such a terrific start. A guy with four fathers, a girfriend who is cheating, and allows the protagonist to read her journal. I think he could have gone a long ways on these two themes...but after the sex tour started it went downhill...
The characters were one-dimensional. I didn't want to know any of them...no one intrigued. Everything felt choppy, and the Black Lagoon scene was beyond belief. I re-read it several times, then gave up.Scandinavia is such a fabulous place. Why not have cultivated the "high class prostitute" angle.
I kept reading, because I hoped that it would get better...but the whole thing was pathetic. Don't waste your time
The book has such a terrific start. A guy with four fathers, a girfriend who is cheating, and allows the protagonist to read her journal. I think he could have gone a long ways on these two themes...but after the sex tour started it went downhill...
The characters were one-dimensional. I didn't want to know any of them...no one intrigued. Everything felt choppy, and the Black Lagoon scene was beyond belief. I re-read it several times, then gave up.Scandinavia is such a fabulous place. Why not have cultivated the "high class prostitute" angle.
I kept reading, because I hoped that it would get better...but the whole thing was pathetic. Don't waste your time
August 1, 2008
Such a promising start--no one writes about obsessive love as well as Scott Spencer did in Endless Love, a great book which was, unfortunately, made into an abysmally bad film (moral of that tale: read contracts carefully, and retain some choices, namely, no Brooke Shields, and no Lionel Richie/Diana Ross theme songs).
But I digress. While Spencer created a near-perfect tale with Endless Love, Willing misfires after a most-compelling beginning. We're introduced to Avery Jankowsky, a 37-year old struggling writer who soon discovers--while perusing her barely-hidden diary--that his girlfriend is unfaithful. Through a quick turn of events, Avery tumbles into a serendipitious gift from his uncle: a $135,000 3-country sex tour, made sweeter by a lucrative deal to write about the experience when he returns to the States.
Okay, so far, so good. This premise, combined with Spencer's top-notch writing skills, made me dive right in.
**SPOILER ALERT** Read no further if you haven't read the book! And I loved the book, until the sex tour began, in which the book became something completely different. Characters begin an action, say walk through a door, then in the next sentence, appear on an airplane. Good old Avery is often confused, an example being when the Sex Tour director casts no shadow. As I was reading, I could see that there were too few pages left to tie everything up, so since I, like the rest of America, had seen The Sixth Sense, quickly figured out what was going on.
Maybe if I hadn't seen The Sixth Sense, maybe if I hadn't read Anita Shreve's The Last Time They Met, I might have said, "Oh! I didn't quite see that coming. How very surprising." But yeah, I had it figured out half-way through, and kept reading, hoping for something better, only to be disappointed.
I don't know if Spencer was trying for something more symbolic, I just felt the ending didn't work. All that inital promise was just thrown away. A pity.
But I digress. While Spencer created a near-perfect tale with Endless Love, Willing misfires after a most-compelling beginning. We're introduced to Avery Jankowsky, a 37-year old struggling writer who soon discovers--while perusing her barely-hidden diary--that his girlfriend is unfaithful. Through a quick turn of events, Avery tumbles into a serendipitious gift from his uncle: a $135,000 3-country sex tour, made sweeter by a lucrative deal to write about the experience when he returns to the States.
Okay, so far, so good. This premise, combined with Spencer's top-notch writing skills, made me dive right in.
**SPOILER ALERT** Read no further if you haven't read the book! And I loved the book, until the sex tour began, in which the book became something completely different. Characters begin an action, say walk through a door, then in the next sentence, appear on an airplane. Good old Avery is often confused, an example being when the Sex Tour director casts no shadow. As I was reading, I could see that there were too few pages left to tie everything up, so since I, like the rest of America, had seen The Sixth Sense, quickly figured out what was going on.
Maybe if I hadn't seen The Sixth Sense, maybe if I hadn't read Anita Shreve's The Last Time They Met, I might have said, "Oh! I didn't quite see that coming. How very surprising." But yeah, I had it figured out half-way through, and kept reading, hoping for something better, only to be disappointed.
I don't know if Spencer was trying for something more symbolic, I just felt the ending didn't work. All that inital promise was just thrown away. A pity.
April 15, 2008
I'm perennially interested in novels about young American men who travel, and I'd never read Spencer before. He certainly is a lyricist, often taking your breath away with that perfectly turned phrase, the exacting metaphor.
The book is about a slight failure of an Avery Jankowsky rent asunder by his younger girlfriend's infidelity. His first-person narration is very seductive--you feel his plight, and identify with his pain. Spencer deftly reveals that much of what is wrong with Avery is in fact his own damn fault, even if it takes Avery a very long time, and some very bad decisions to figure this out. There's also some odd notions about the Oedipus complex and prostitution thrown in for good measure.
Spencer tackles head on some very potent ideas: the commodification of feminine beauty, the violence underlying sublimated masculine exchange, American imperialism, and the sex tourism industry. He never develops these as much as you'd like--I couldn't help but think there were a few great (if difficult) chapters edited out at some point. We're left with a meal just short of filling, as if the waiter informed you they just ran out of your favorite dessert.
The book is about a slight failure of an Avery Jankowsky rent asunder by his younger girlfriend's infidelity. His first-person narration is very seductive--you feel his plight, and identify with his pain. Spencer deftly reveals that much of what is wrong with Avery is in fact his own damn fault, even if it takes Avery a very long time, and some very bad decisions to figure this out. There's also some odd notions about the Oedipus complex and prostitution thrown in for good measure.
Spencer tackles head on some very potent ideas: the commodification of feminine beauty, the violence underlying sublimated masculine exchange, American imperialism, and the sex tourism industry. He never develops these as much as you'd like--I couldn't help but think there were a few great (if difficult) chapters edited out at some point. We're left with a meal just short of filling, as if the waiter informed you they just ran out of your favorite dessert.
February 27, 2009
This is a novel with a great idea for a plot suffering from multiple genre disorder. Is it farce? Comedy? Literary fiction? It's possible for a book to be at least two of those things, maybe all three, but this book doesn't quite achieve any of them. Avery Jankowsky, a freelance writer who's not quite making a living as a writer but is doing too well to quit, tells us the story of his many fathered childhood; his disappointing attempts at relationships; and how they all lead him to take an all expenses paid sex tour. Skipping along through Scandinavia with his fellow travelers, Avery always seems on the verge of breaking out of his self imposed dreariness. If he had, we'd have a funny book. If he discovered he couldn't, this could have been a story of a man accepting his life for what it is. Instead, we get a bunch of characters doing exactly what you knew they were going to do the moment you first read about them, and an ending that puts the story almost exactly back where it started.
July 2, 2009
Some really good, honest stuff about relationships and the mania of break-ups. Reminded me in spots of Saul Bellow. Spencer has a real talent for descriptive one liners. There are dozens of beautiful phrases throughout. Hard to believe with all that said, this is a book about a writer going on a sex tour. It's really not that salacious. It's more about people and observed behavior. And the obsessions of the flesh. So many strings were left hanging at the end, it's hard for me to give this a higher grade. And the mother showing up was not a welcome diversion. It was sort of like tossing in a plot element from Three's Company. But there's so much to like here otherwise, it didn't bother me much.
June 22, 2008
This book has lots of symbolism and I get all of that, BUT it is a "tease" of a book. Most of the way through the book it promises a lot, but it falls flat with a rather contrived ending.
In this story the main character, a writer is, on his high priced 10-day sex tour. He has offers to make him rich if he writes about it. His mother shows up and ends the trip early. Too bad Scott Spencer mom didn't interrupt and keep him from writing this novel.
I am convinced that novels about writers are never good. At least the last 4 I read have not been worth the time.
In this story the main character, a writer is, on his high priced 10-day sex tour. He has offers to make him rich if he writes about it. His mother shows up and ends the trip early. Too bad Scott Spencer mom didn't interrupt and keep him from writing this novel.
I am convinced that novels about writers are never good. At least the last 4 I read have not been worth the time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 13, 2008
Basically Scott Spencer could write about staring at a fly on a wall and I'd read it. He is funny, direct, writes about love and sex, men and women in the most interesting, sophisticated and humorous ways. His intelligence is palpable and he has nothing to prove, only his one-of-a-kind world view to offer.
May 28, 2008
I had expectations that this book would delve much deeper into the questions of morality and self-restraint but...it just turned into a raunchy story about a sex tour. The author tried to return to the larger questions towards the end of the book but it wasn't enough for me.
March 29, 2008
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-revi...
This is a piece on the book I wrote recently...
This is a piece on the book I wrote recently...
Read
March 20, 2008I am dying to read. Heard about on NPR today. Anyone read this?
April 18, 2008
No likable characters, I don't understand why it is so popular.
October 16, 2008
Men behaving badly has been dominating the television landscape with shows like Mad Men and Californification, and now it has entered into literature with Willing. Well, it’s not exactly new territory considering hard-boiled detective stories with the leading man getting business and pleasure confused. But most of those characters do such things without referencing their own morality, and this is what separates author Scott Spencer’s narrator Avery Jankowsky.
Avery is a down on his luck freelance writer. He regularly inhabits a lonely space in the world, and his sad, bumbling existence becomes a little less so when he meets a young love interest Deirdre. She is described as being too good for Avery, much younger, smarter and better connected; and if it wasn’t for a later revelation of her past stout body shape, the reader would have a hard time trying to understand what she sees in this (essentially) dolt. So it comes as no surprise to learn that she’s cheating on him, but what is more telling is Avery’s reaction to this. He internalizes his anger and only allows it to come out as knee jerk reactions to his pet peeves, such as her grammar mistakes written in her private diary that Avery obsessively sneaks peaks of.
The lack of him processing any emotion over the affair sends him into a severe well of doldrums with a vindictive agenda. He then stumbles on what he thinks is the opportunity to get out of his slump, an international sex tour, which is where the story strays from many other novels of self-loathing. In a way, the first half of the book makes fun of itself later on when Avery meets the other men on the trip who are all so profoundly alone; showing just how much loneliness has driven creativity and progress. It’s embarrassing to read about the extents that some will go to in order to find a remedy, most likely because it reminds us of our own embarrassment or shame over at least one thing done to escape destituteness, even if going on a trip like this is seen as morally apprehensible to almost everybody.
I’m still trying to figure out what all the Lincoln references meant…Avery’s phrase “my four fathers” and a character named Lincoln Castle. I can’t help but seeing the sex tour plane as representing America itself. The majority of the men are trying to escape something in their past and together they whore around the world, using women in other countries at their disposal. But the sex workers aren’t exactly passive in the relationship; they know they have something wanted and are capitalizing on it, even if the hatred of their benefactors is thinly veiled. The sorry state of America’s status in the world is touched on more than once, as the men are frequent targets of what could be called terrorism.
The parallels to America could be made, as the U.S. seems to be trying to reinvent itself, which it has traditionally done by looking to Europe. And of course, the men’s varying treatment of their paid companions mirrors the way the U.S. uses the resources in other nations, sometimes ambivalently, sometimes maniacally.
Victimization is a central theme in the story, but it’s difficult to identify true casualties. All of the characters are victims as well as perpetrators. Everyone in the story has taken advantage of someone else; sometimes it has worked to their benefit, like Uncle Ezra getting rich off of giving poor people a fraction of their settlement money in exchange for its immediacy, and other times it has not, such as Deirdre taking advantage of Avery’s unassertive attitude resulting in him abandoning her (but she still might be the victor in the end as she positioned herself to pick up with Avery after he returns from his sexcapades).
Avery comes the closest to being the real victim, as he’s ultimately kicked off the trip. But even though he’s somewhat falsely accused, does being kicked out of this vile experience qualify him as being wronged? And this only happens after he’s totally surrendered all of his morality. When all of his traditional boundaries are blurred, he’s not sure where he even exists physically, a manifestation of his mental confusion. He’s left completely lost and sinking when his mother shows up.
The biggest message in the book comes from Avery’s mother, who herself stands on shaky moral ground. She tells Avery that just because he can do something doesn’t mean he should do it, suggesting a larger wrong and right than one in the boundaries of this world. Committing a wrong is something much more spiritual than I think most of us would realize or like to acknowledge.
However, in the passages where he coexists with his mother, an intimate portrait is painted, explaining why Avery has become the wet noodle of a man he is. She has instructed him to be this way through her flighty relationships with men and her resigned parenting approach. But even so, that sympathy evoked for him soon falters as it is clear he needs to start taking responsibility for his actions, no matter when his drift into no man’s land actually started. His mother serves as his new moral backbone and a stiff slap back into reality, even though she had never served those roles before. Who or what would Spencer suggest serve as America’s mother?
Avery is a down on his luck freelance writer. He regularly inhabits a lonely space in the world, and his sad, bumbling existence becomes a little less so when he meets a young love interest Deirdre. She is described as being too good for Avery, much younger, smarter and better connected; and if it wasn’t for a later revelation of her past stout body shape, the reader would have a hard time trying to understand what she sees in this (essentially) dolt. So it comes as no surprise to learn that she’s cheating on him, but what is more telling is Avery’s reaction to this. He internalizes his anger and only allows it to come out as knee jerk reactions to his pet peeves, such as her grammar mistakes written in her private diary that Avery obsessively sneaks peaks of.
The lack of him processing any emotion over the affair sends him into a severe well of doldrums with a vindictive agenda. He then stumbles on what he thinks is the opportunity to get out of his slump, an international sex tour, which is where the story strays from many other novels of self-loathing. In a way, the first half of the book makes fun of itself later on when Avery meets the other men on the trip who are all so profoundly alone; showing just how much loneliness has driven creativity and progress. It’s embarrassing to read about the extents that some will go to in order to find a remedy, most likely because it reminds us of our own embarrassment or shame over at least one thing done to escape destituteness, even if going on a trip like this is seen as morally apprehensible to almost everybody.
I’m still trying to figure out what all the Lincoln references meant…Avery’s phrase “my four fathers” and a character named Lincoln Castle. I can’t help but seeing the sex tour plane as representing America itself. The majority of the men are trying to escape something in their past and together they whore around the world, using women in other countries at their disposal. But the sex workers aren’t exactly passive in the relationship; they know they have something wanted and are capitalizing on it, even if the hatred of their benefactors is thinly veiled. The sorry state of America’s status in the world is touched on more than once, as the men are frequent targets of what could be called terrorism.
The parallels to America could be made, as the U.S. seems to be trying to reinvent itself, which it has traditionally done by looking to Europe. And of course, the men’s varying treatment of their paid companions mirrors the way the U.S. uses the resources in other nations, sometimes ambivalently, sometimes maniacally.
Victimization is a central theme in the story, but it’s difficult to identify true casualties. All of the characters are victims as well as perpetrators. Everyone in the story has taken advantage of someone else; sometimes it has worked to their benefit, like Uncle Ezra getting rich off of giving poor people a fraction of their settlement money in exchange for its immediacy, and other times it has not, such as Deirdre taking advantage of Avery’s unassertive attitude resulting in him abandoning her (but she still might be the victor in the end as she positioned herself to pick up with Avery after he returns from his sexcapades).
Avery comes the closest to being the real victim, as he’s ultimately kicked off the trip. But even though he’s somewhat falsely accused, does being kicked out of this vile experience qualify him as being wronged? And this only happens after he’s totally surrendered all of his morality. When all of his traditional boundaries are blurred, he’s not sure where he even exists physically, a manifestation of his mental confusion. He’s left completely lost and sinking when his mother shows up.
The biggest message in the book comes from Avery’s mother, who herself stands on shaky moral ground. She tells Avery that just because he can do something doesn’t mean he should do it, suggesting a larger wrong and right than one in the boundaries of this world. Committing a wrong is something much more spiritual than I think most of us would realize or like to acknowledge.
However, in the passages where he coexists with his mother, an intimate portrait is painted, explaining why Avery has become the wet noodle of a man he is. She has instructed him to be this way through her flighty relationships with men and her resigned parenting approach. But even so, that sympathy evoked for him soon falters as it is clear he needs to start taking responsibility for his actions, no matter when his drift into no man’s land actually started. His mother serves as his new moral backbone and a stiff slap back into reality, even though she had never served those roles before. Who or what would Spencer suggest serve as America’s mother?
March 29, 2008
I saw Spencer read from Willing last week at McNally Robinson's in New York. As a premise, this novel had a lot of promise, but became tacky and melodramatic. A hornet's nest of men. I'm such a fan of Spencer's Endless Love and Waking The Dead--he's one of the great writers on obsessive love/desire. But Willing is an example of how "craft" upstages content. What does it mean to be "good at what you do," if what you're "good" at (technically) rings hollow?
What starts off as a kind of fictional critique about male power, the modern (internet) culture of sex, and stereotypes of desire, devolves into a prison of cliches, which in some ways is really what oppresses us all. I was initially taken by the way Spencer discussed his book (at McNally's and on Fresh Air). But Willing is a miasma of gender-constructed hopelessness; of men stuck in their ruts, of men always getting in their, and women's, way. The idea--the Oedipal idea--which is also an idea of origins in the book, is that Noami, Avery's emotionally estranged mother, was the one who biologically and symbolically ushered Avery into a world of men, or patriarchal privilege, and by extension, a world of inevitable amorality (where you do things, as Bill Clinton said, "because you can"). Where if God isn't watching what you do, no one is. In other words, Noami has to "clean up the mess" she's made. Her four compulsive marriages, which tacked a new surname onto Avery each time, and eroded his moral compass, becomes a symbol of over-identification with men. Just as Noami has spent her life being a women who has been defined by men, and has defined herself through the men she was married to, she has to "save" her son from a life of homosocial over-determination. It isn't women these men are having "orgies" with, but men, who through sex, money, and power, are really affiliated with each other ("The Metal Men, however, were there, talking animatedly with each other and more or less ignoring the women they had chosen"). Thus, it becomes Noami's maternal and moral duty to extract (rescue) Avery from his male miasma and moral deterioration (the international sex tour he's on/investigating). Taking him home (a symbolic home, not just a geographic one), becomes a heavy-handed metaphor for a new beginning and masculine revisionism, but it also stands for a kind of intervention Noami never staged for Avery when he was a boy and that he needed in order to become a man who "respects women."
I think Spencer was trying to say something modern and important about ethics and sexual modernity (cyberspace, etc)--the ways in which desire is scripted and forced upon us, a kind of narrative we all have to culturally act out and conform to. But Spencer is stuck in time and in his own gender. Generationally, he might not be entirely right for the job. It's a view from the past, a cliched lens built on a very new dilemma (the excess and total ubiquity of media); the dilemma of living in a world where "everything's for sale." If Avery has the enlightenment but doesn't use it, what does that mean for all of us?
What starts off as a kind of fictional critique about male power, the modern (internet) culture of sex, and stereotypes of desire, devolves into a prison of cliches, which in some ways is really what oppresses us all. I was initially taken by the way Spencer discussed his book (at McNally's and on Fresh Air). But Willing is a miasma of gender-constructed hopelessness; of men stuck in their ruts, of men always getting in their, and women's, way. The idea--the Oedipal idea--which is also an idea of origins in the book, is that Noami, Avery's emotionally estranged mother, was the one who biologically and symbolically ushered Avery into a world of men, or patriarchal privilege, and by extension, a world of inevitable amorality (where you do things, as Bill Clinton said, "because you can"). Where if God isn't watching what you do, no one is. In other words, Noami has to "clean up the mess" she's made. Her four compulsive marriages, which tacked a new surname onto Avery each time, and eroded his moral compass, becomes a symbol of over-identification with men. Just as Noami has spent her life being a women who has been defined by men, and has defined herself through the men she was married to, she has to "save" her son from a life of homosocial over-determination. It isn't women these men are having "orgies" with, but men, who through sex, money, and power, are really affiliated with each other ("The Metal Men, however, were there, talking animatedly with each other and more or less ignoring the women they had chosen"). Thus, it becomes Noami's maternal and moral duty to extract (rescue) Avery from his male miasma and moral deterioration (the international sex tour he's on/investigating). Taking him home (a symbolic home, not just a geographic one), becomes a heavy-handed metaphor for a new beginning and masculine revisionism, but it also stands for a kind of intervention Noami never staged for Avery when he was a boy and that he needed in order to become a man who "respects women."
I think Spencer was trying to say something modern and important about ethics and sexual modernity (cyberspace, etc)--the ways in which desire is scripted and forced upon us, a kind of narrative we all have to culturally act out and conform to. But Spencer is stuck in time and in his own gender. Generationally, he might not be entirely right for the job. It's a view from the past, a cliched lens built on a very new dilemma (the excess and total ubiquity of media); the dilemma of living in a world where "everything's for sale." If Avery has the enlightenment but doesn't use it, what does that mean for all of us?
August 23, 2011
Willing is about a man who goes on a sex tour to a few relatively obscure foreign countries, and is paid a rather handsome sum to write a book about it. I’m guessing that such an assignment might not be unappealing to a number of male writers.
I think, to read Mr. Spencer, one must not be sexually squeamish, as there is something in every one to send a few shock waves. But the way he talks about such things, so naturally, I can’t help but get a picture of the kind of person Mr. Spencer might be. I’m guessing, the quiet, introspective type, much like Jonathon Franzen, that the outward persona does not match the man inside.
Mr. Spencer breaks a lot of rules with this one. There is not one quotation mark in the whole novel. The dialogue is intermixed with the narrative. We are told in the How To books to put each person’s dialogue in a separate paragraph. Nope, he doesn’t do that either. So we have dialogue, which we aren’t always sure really is dialogue, and two or more people speaking in the same paragraph, so we aren’t always sure who is doing the talking. But somehow it works. There are pages with hardly any whitespace, another faux pas. Lack of whitespace makes readers weary, shorter paragraphs and single lines mix it up visually and the reader is less intimidated by droning on and on, so they say.
I found six editing errors, five which were duplicate words or wrongly phrased such that I knew it was unintentional, and one punctuation error.
This is not my favorite of his novels, but the writing is still all there, superb, funny, gripping descriptions of characters (of which there are a great number). Take this description of himself, on the first page, written in first person POV:
Physically, I was of the type no longer commonly minted, a large serious face, a little heavier than necessary, broad shoulders, sturdy legs, hair and eyes the color of a lunch bag.
Gives you a pretty good idea, right? I especially loved the reference to a lunch bag.
Or this description of someone encountered at one of the stops:
One was a heavyset guy with a shaved head who looked like the world’s most enormous baby, with a nose like a knuckle and dark little eyes the size of watermelon seeds.
The book is crammed with stuff like this. On every page, there are great thoughts and descriptions. This author understands people, he gets it so right. Humorous, witty, and insightful.
I think, to read Mr. Spencer, one must not be sexually squeamish, as there is something in every one to send a few shock waves. But the way he talks about such things, so naturally, I can’t help but get a picture of the kind of person Mr. Spencer might be. I’m guessing, the quiet, introspective type, much like Jonathon Franzen, that the outward persona does not match the man inside.
Mr. Spencer breaks a lot of rules with this one. There is not one quotation mark in the whole novel. The dialogue is intermixed with the narrative. We are told in the How To books to put each person’s dialogue in a separate paragraph. Nope, he doesn’t do that either. So we have dialogue, which we aren’t always sure really is dialogue, and two or more people speaking in the same paragraph, so we aren’t always sure who is doing the talking. But somehow it works. There are pages with hardly any whitespace, another faux pas. Lack of whitespace makes readers weary, shorter paragraphs and single lines mix it up visually and the reader is less intimidated by droning on and on, so they say.
I found six editing errors, five which were duplicate words or wrongly phrased such that I knew it was unintentional, and one punctuation error.
This is not my favorite of his novels, but the writing is still all there, superb, funny, gripping descriptions of characters (of which there are a great number). Take this description of himself, on the first page, written in first person POV:
Physically, I was of the type no longer commonly minted, a large serious face, a little heavier than necessary, broad shoulders, sturdy legs, hair and eyes the color of a lunch bag.
Gives you a pretty good idea, right? I especially loved the reference to a lunch bag.
Or this description of someone encountered at one of the stops:
One was a heavyset guy with a shaved head who looked like the world’s most enormous baby, with a nose like a knuckle and dark little eyes the size of watermelon seeds.
The book is crammed with stuff like this. On every page, there are great thoughts and descriptions. This author understands people, he gets it so right. Humorous, witty, and insightful.
December 21, 2008
Scott Spencer's strengths:
* Often funny
* Psychological insights about love/relationships that you'll re-read
* Terrific metaphors
This book exhibits all of these. The plot concerns a 37-year-old freelance writer, Avery Jankowsky, whom Spencer contrives to have a serious need for cash combine with an opportunity from a well-connected uncle to go on a European sex tour for rich American businessmen at no cost to Avery. Having arranged with an editor to sell a story about these kinds of tours for a hefty fee, Avery, his conscience soothed that he's only going as a professional (kind of what you could call the Pete Townsend defense), agrees to go, convinced he'll be able to keep his distance from the other, sleazier (he thinks), men on the trip.
That's the set-up, and Spencer builds it flawlessly.
I have to confess that while Spencer's skills on the sentences level alone make his books worth reading, *Willing* begins with several extremely strong chapters about Avery's troubled relationship with Deidre. This is the best part of the book; once the sex tour starts, the book weakened for me, only slightly at first, but by the end, I thought some of the turns of plot and character weren't entirely believable. (There's a bit of a trick ending which may explain this shift -- but even if you buy the implication of the trick I was just never as engrossed in any part of the sex tour plot as I was with his relationship with Deidre.)
I do give this 4 stars, and it is worth reading. There are insightful bits of wisdom and fine turns of phrase on nearly every page. Some sentences you'll read two or three times just to savor the wit or the apt detail. I'll be looking for other Spencer titles soon.
* Often funny
* Psychological insights about love/relationships that you'll re-read
* Terrific metaphors
This book exhibits all of these. The plot concerns a 37-year-old freelance writer, Avery Jankowsky, whom Spencer contrives to have a serious need for cash combine with an opportunity from a well-connected uncle to go on a European sex tour for rich American businessmen at no cost to Avery. Having arranged with an editor to sell a story about these kinds of tours for a hefty fee, Avery, his conscience soothed that he's only going as a professional (kind of what you could call the Pete Townsend defense), agrees to go, convinced he'll be able to keep his distance from the other, sleazier (he thinks), men on the trip.
That's the set-up, and Spencer builds it flawlessly.
I have to confess that while Spencer's skills on the sentences level alone make his books worth reading, *Willing* begins with several extremely strong chapters about Avery's troubled relationship with Deidre. This is the best part of the book; once the sex tour starts, the book weakened for me, only slightly at first, but by the end, I thought some of the turns of plot and character weren't entirely believable. (There's a bit of a trick ending which may explain this shift -- but even if you buy the implication of the trick I was just never as engrossed in any part of the sex tour plot as I was with his relationship with Deidre.)
I do give this 4 stars, and it is worth reading. There are insightful bits of wisdom and fine turns of phrase on nearly every page. Some sentences you'll read two or three times just to savor the wit or the apt detail. I'll be looking for other Spencer titles soon.
December 2, 2008
I checked this book out from the library based on half-listening to an interview with the author on NPR, maybe Fresh Air. I incorrectly expected it to be a non-fiction look at the sex tourism world, with a focus on areas other than Southeast Asia. Instead, it is one step removed, being a novel based on the protagonist, Avery Jankowsky, getting a book deal to write about the sex tourism industry based on his personal experience on a sex tour in northern Europe. Avery gets a free seat from his uncle, who is owed a favor by the tour company owner, to take his mind off the philanderings of his ex-girlfriend. And away he goes! He struggles to maintain his objective distance and clings to his cover as an observer, not a participant. His resolve doesn't last long, and he's soon sucked into the vortex of male bonding and competition, human bondage, power, and strange family dynamics. Eventually things get weird as his mom shows up at the hotel accompanying one of the tour members, and Avery's plan falls apart. 3.5
January 22, 2010
I heard an interview with this author on NPR and it sounded intriguing so after having on my TBR for about a year I finally read it. The story is about a journalist who is offered an all expenses paid "sex vacation" to Easter Europeam countries. He is prompted to take the offer after his girlfriend dumps him and his finances seem to be falling apart. He gets the bright idea to chronicle his experience in a tell all book and actually gets some lucrative offers.
Despite the sex related theme the book seemed quite tame to me and didn't get into much detail of their escapades and only barely scratched the surface of the planned exposé that the journalist embarked on. After reading it I felt like I had wasted several hours. The interview on NPR made it out to be way more risqué than it actually was. The author also did not use quotation marks for dialogue and I found that pretty annoying as well.
Despite the sex related theme the book seemed quite tame to me and didn't get into much detail of their escapades and only barely scratched the surface of the planned exposé that the journalist embarked on. After reading it I felt like I had wasted several hours. The interview on NPR made it out to be way more risqué than it actually was. The author also did not use quotation marks for dialogue and I found that pretty annoying as well.
March 28, 2008
I first heard of Scott Spencer and his new book while listening to NPR. I knew immediately I wanted to read it. It was a quick read, with some impressive turns of language and descriptions. Yet, overall, I didn't like the story, nor did I sympathize with any of the characters. I found them to be empty, boring and at times simply obnoxious. Maybe that was his whole point to the story about crossing moral boundaries and human codes of conduct. Whatever the case, I am on the fence about recommending this to anyone who enjoys reading for pleasure. This is more for somebody who wants to walk away from the last page with the intention of analyzing their own ethics, morality and happiness.
And while the blurring of dialogue was an adjustment, I think it added to the "secrecy" of the subject matter. Like everyone was really skirting around the true topic: what does it mean to be happy, alive and fulfilled in a life that teeters between the moral high ground and land fill.
And while the blurring of dialogue was an adjustment, I think it added to the "secrecy" of the subject matter. Like everyone was really skirting around the true topic: what does it mean to be happy, alive and fulfilled in a life that teeters between the moral high ground and land fill.
November 13, 2008
Interesting take on a man with a broken heart trying to get over his maternal issues (and man issues) by going on a free European sex tour. Well, the narrator is interesting, sympathetic, and descriptive which tends to be Spencer's thing when having a first-person male narrator. The beginning had me with the back & forth between Avery and his adulterous girlfriend but the hijinks and massive amount of characters on the sex tour get a bit overwhelming and it wasn't until I was 3/4 of the way through the book that I was able to recognize his sex tour comrades.
I love books that take me into the male psyche and Avery being a sensitive man all the better. But I definitely think this book ends too soon when it comes to this characters take on life. And the neatly tied up ending about his financial & mommy issues was a bit much for me.
A good/entertaining read, but from the three Spencer works I've read not the best.
I love books that take me into the male psyche and Avery being a sensitive man all the better. But I definitely think this book ends too soon when it comes to this characters take on life. And the neatly tied up ending about his financial & mommy issues was a bit much for me.
A good/entertaining read, but from the three Spencer works I've read not the best.
January 11, 2013
The writing is great: fluent, tons of sharp metaphors rolling off the page, and tremendously insightful. The story can't fail to engage curiosity, given that it explores sexual mores through the experiences of a hard-up writer who is gifted the chance to participate in an up-market sex tour. But the constant self reflection that floods the book begins to feel a bit self indulgent and I found myself wondering at times if this was more a study of neurosis than an investigation of male libido. The twists and turns of the story start to strain credulity too, as one unexpected event after another impacts the 'tour' group - and the ending was a real stretch, almost feeling like Spencer had decided he had to get the damn thing finished and off to the publisher. Good, highly readable, but not great.
December 31, 2013
I really like this author. His writing - sentence construction and flow, language use, behavioral insight/maturity - is just lovely. There are always surprises, usually funny ones; great sense of humor and absurdity. He makes some ballsy choices that make ne happy as a reader. I like Jonathan Franzen too - Spencer is like an older, smarter (=more mature), less self-conscious iteration. Spencer's work seems more distilled and less effortful, the latter *surely* being brought to us by the siamese twins of talent and skill.
To comment on this story specifically: it's looking at the conflict between nature and culture in a way I found deeply human and relatable. Some authors' writing makes you wish you knew them personally, and this guy's one of those for me.
To comment on this story specifically: it's looking at the conflict between nature and culture in a way I found deeply human and relatable. Some authors' writing makes you wish you knew them personally, and this guy's one of those for me.
May 5, 2014
This began so well, insightful and intriguing, but by the time the main plot got going it had descended into not-particularly-funny farce. The main character, Avery, was initially well-drawn and complex, but seemed to stall once the book got going. Rather than develop due to his experiences he just went round in circles (presumably due to the rather leaden plot device of a bump on the head). All the other characters were so one-dimensional I could hardly keep them straight in my head. There were so many interesting things the author could have done with his fascinating premise - which he clearly, on the evidence of how well written the start was, has the skill to do - but all we got was a bunch of farcical scenes and a rather bizarre ending. Five stars at the start, two by the end.
February 14, 2011
A failed literary attempt, at best. Boring, tepid. Giving it two stars because of spencer's prose, otherwise it would be a one star. I felt like a psychiatrist trapped with a patient staring introspectively at, well, not his navel. Too bad. I read this because the author's npr interview was good. Spenser attempts to deal with the subject of the omnipresence of pornographic content. "what does this do to us?" spencer said in the interview. A better novel on the subject is tom wolfe's " i am Charlotte Simmons". Pornography is rape and subjugation, pure and simple. No need to embellish it with a drawn out Freudian monologue.
July 16, 2011
My interpretation of the plot twist...
After avery joined the sex tour I thought that the plot had turned to a dream sequence - which had started with him getting a head injury and perhaps being asleep in the hospital. And as the story progressed there were many clues that supported this - his conversation with his girlfriend, the lack of Castle's reflection in mirrors, his mom joining him, and then his memory and reality/stability getting increasingly distorted toward the end. I thought this trick was too gimmicky and hoped that he would not just wake up at the end and realize it was all a dream.
And it wasn't a dream, indeed. It was his dying dream.
After avery joined the sex tour I thought that the plot had turned to a dream sequence - which had started with him getting a head injury and perhaps being asleep in the hospital. And as the story progressed there were many clues that supported this - his conversation with his girlfriend, the lack of Castle's reflection in mirrors, his mom joining him, and then his memory and reality/stability getting increasingly distorted toward the end. I thought this trick was too gimmicky and hoped that he would not just wake up at the end and realize it was all a dream.
And it wasn't a dream, indeed. It was his dying dream.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 22, 2018
This books deserves barely the tip of a star. Willing reads like a teen boy's sexual fantasy and is every bit as immature and unsatisfying. Perhaps it's about the depravity of mankind or men in general as some kind of theme. Maybe a man's relationship with his mother... I really couldn't say. The protagonist wasn't likable or unlikable. He was boring. The peripheral characters weren't memorable. Willing is decent prose wasted on a trashy story. I loved Spencer's A Ship Made of Paper, however, Willing reminds me not to waste a second longer reading a horrible book.
May 25, 2008
This is a story about a writer who goes on a Northern Europe sex tour, after finding out that his girlfriend had another lover.
Avery had the intent of writing it up as book.
But problems ensue.......
Scott Spencer's writing style is masterful. But I miss quotation marks. Is this a new style?
This book is not for everyone.
Terry Gross's interview with the author on Fresh Air is highly recommended.
Avery had the intent of writing it up as book.
But problems ensue.......
Scott Spencer's writing style is masterful. But I miss quotation marks. Is this a new style?
This book is not for everyone.
Terry Gross's interview with the author on Fresh Air is highly recommended.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews