What You Have Left: A Novel [Paperback]

Will Allison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2008

In 1976, on the day of his wife’s funeral, Wylie Greer drops off his five-year-old daughter, Holly, at his father-in-law’s dairy farm on the outskirts of Columbia, South Carolina. Wylie asks for a little time to clear his head, but thirty years pass before Holly sees her father again. What You Have Left is about a father and daughter trying to make their way back to one another across decades of longing, uncertainty, and ambivalence—all the while hoping to discover that what they have left is worth salvaging. Shot through with sly humor and a knowing sympathy for human weakness, What You Have Left is a stunning debut that explores the weight of history, the nature of loss, and the possibility of forgiveness.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Loss and redemption take center stage in story writer Allison's beautifully written debut novel. When five-year-old Holly's mother dies suddenly in the summer of 1976, Holly's father, Wylie, leaves her in the care of her grandfather, Cal, and disappears. Holly's coming-of-age on her grandfather's South Carolina dairy farm is a turbulent one, producing a volatile woman with drinking and gambling problems. She does manage, however, to land a good husband in Cal's contractor, Lyle, and the two have a daughter. Meanwhile, Wylie drinks himself close to death and works odd jobs, while Cal endures the deaths of his wife and daughter with stoic dignity. But an Alzheimer's diagnosis proves too much to bear, leaving Cal to put his affairs in order before making an early, quiet exit. It's more than 15 years later before Holly and Wylie reunite, providing the deeply felt emotional core of this earnest novel. Characters' tension-fraught relationships are well played, and Allison is adept at navigating a labyrinthine web of psychological underpinnings. Though the structure has its stymied moments (chapters are chronologically jumbled and are told in various voices, narrative styles and tenses), the nonlinear narrative gives Allison a trove of angles, and he nails all of them. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Allison's engaging debut dissects the guilt and betrayal embedded in the history of one South Carolina family. Shifting narrators relate the saga of four generations, beginning in 1991 when Holly is 20, struggling with the fact that her grandfather Cal is planning to overdose rather than fall victim to Alzheimer's. Cal raised Holly after her mother Maddy died in an accident and her father Wylie disappeared, unable to cope with his grief. Allison flashes back to the early years of Maddy and Wylie's marriage, when they dreamed of entering the NASCAR circuit, then jumps to Holly's somewhat troubled marriage to Lyle after Cal dies. Eventually the aging Wylie becomes the narrator as grandfather to Holly and Lyle's daughter, and the facts surrounding his subsequent disappearance and lack of communication over the years are seen through yet another lens. Allison clearly empathizes with his characters' foibles and manages always to find some measure of humor when they repeatedly let each other down. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; Reprint edition (June 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416541403
• ISBN-13: 978-1416541400
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,259,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in Columbia, South Carolina, and now live with my wife and daughter in South Orange, New Jersey. In between, I've lived in Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and elsewhere; taught creative writing at The Ohio State University, Butler University, and Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis; and worked as executive editor of Story, editor at large of Zoetrope: All-Story, editor of Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, and as a freelance editor and writer. I've also been on staff at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. I received a BA in English and political science from Case Western Reserve University as well as an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State. I'm the grateful recipient of grants, fellowships, and scholarships from the Indiana Arts Commission, Arts Council of Indianapolis, Ohio Arts Council, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference (including a 1996 work-study scholarship and the 2008 Allan Collins Fellowship in Fiction). My first novel, What You Have Left, was published in 2007 by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Paperback and audio book editions were published in 2008. A paperback reissue is due out in April 2011, and my second novel, Long Drive Home, will be published by Free Press in May 2011.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars weird, wonderful, slice of life, June 21, 2007

By 

Richard Cumming "dick" (the heartland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What You Have Left: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "the human heart itself", June 14, 2007

By 

Kyle Minor "reader" (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: What You Have Left: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Impressive Debut, June 24, 2007

By 

Peter C. Dully Jr. "pcdjresqrg" (columbus, ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What You Have Left: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.