Willow, by Julia Hoban
Hoban, Julia (2009). Willow. NY: Dial. 352 pages.
When I saw Willow on the “Free ARCs” shelf at my library, I was so psyched; I loved Julia Hoban’s awesome 1998 novel Acting Normal and was really looking forward to something similar. When I saw that, like Normal, Willow was going to deal with a topic related to mental illness, I was even more eager to read the new novel. Unfortunately, though Willow did turn out to be a good book–and it does stand out from others of its kind–it was not as satisfying or as sympathetic as Acting Normal.
High school junior Willow Randall killed her parents. When, after her mother and father ordered a second bottle of wine at dinner, Willow was recruited to drive the family home, she lost control of the car on the rainy streets and (she believes) caused the accident that killed her parents but spared her. Now Willow lives in a cramped apartment with her professor brother, his wife and their baby, goes to a new school, contributes to the family finances by working at the university library, and cuts herself to keep her deepest sorrows and anxieties as bay. When a male classmate and casual acquaintance discovers Willow’s secret, he insinuates himself into Willow’s life, first as her protector and then as her boyfriend. With his support, Willow begins to reconsider the accident that killed her parents and starts to open up to the brother she is convinced must hate her.
The initial premise of Willow is definitely compelling, especially as the novel takes pains (har har) to demonstrate Willow’s cutting behavior as a coping mechanism of last resort. By situating the protagonist in a nearly unimaginable dilemma and in what would seem like realistically responsive pain–Willow does, in a twisted way, bear some responsibility for her parents’ death–the cutting behaviors are, if not explained, then visible as an equally horrible and dramatic response to a horrible and dramatic incident.
It’s really the appearance and influence of Willow’s friend Guy that bothers me here. While the two characters discuss the likelihood that anyone else would intervene in another’s psychosis, that Guy and Willow confront the unusual nature of their relationship doesn’t sufficiently justify it for me. I know you’re supposed to critique the book that was written, rather than the book you wish was written, but I just wanted to offer my “wish” for the novel. It would have been so cool–and also very subversive in a spectacular kind of way–if Guy had turned out to be not a savior but something of a fetishist, whose obsession with Willow seemed to be therapeutic in intent but was actually soul-sucking and voyeuristic. This would allow us to confront the voyeurism inherent in reading books of this type while at the same time underscoring the behavior-of-last-resort nature of cutting. Next time, right, Julia Hoban?