Customer Reviews

Willing

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When an author who I immensely respect -- I devoured other Scott Spencer books -- describes a sex orgy and my reaction is to quickly flip pages, I know that something is amiss. And, in my opinion, something is in his newest novel.

The novel begins promising enough. Avery, a 37-year-old New Yorker with a troubled childhood (he had four fathers while growing up), begins an affair with Deirdre, who eventually betrays him. His uncle, sensing his emotional state, offers to give him a ticket to a very upscale international sex tour. Interesting premise.

But here's where the book begins to go astray. Avery receives a book deal of his own to report on this all-expenses-paid luxury trip. The result is a reportorial style; each participant is reported on, each location, etc. -- without anything coming alive, for this reader.

At one point, Spencer reveals his mission: "If we can't find our way back to where something began, what hope do we have of ever understanding why we are where we are?" The tour explores these questions: our baser instincts versus our higher ones, our freedoms versus our constraints, our past versus our present and future. There are many Oedipal threads that run through the book and the ending, which makes ample use of them, was downright irritating to me.

Scott Spencer is a fine writer who, especially in some of his metaphors, makes it look effortless. He has done better and I'd encourage other readers to explore his earlier works.

In Scott Spencer's latest novel WILLING Avery Jankowsky, the first person narrator, is thirty-seven, a down-and-out writer with not much success in his profession and even less in his love life. He is both the casualty of a brief marriage and an affair with a younger woman Deidre who confesses to him that she has been sleeping with another man. He also is obsessed about his mother's four marriages and his having to change his last name for each new stepfather. To salve his sorrow, his Uncle Ezra sends him on a $135,000 sex tour with stops in Reykjavik, Oslo and Riga. Avery sees his sex junket as a chance to get a good piece of journalism out of the trip as well.

What transpires is often a comedy of errors but with an undercurrent of sadness and weariness under the froth of sexual excess. Such a motley group of fellow prostitute hounds you are unlikely to meet. They provide much of the humor but ultimate sorrow in Mr. Spencer's story. You will meet an aging doctor and his son who is a casualty of the war in Iraq, a former NBA player, a lottery winner who sends postcards back home, a very successful but dishonest businessman who has done jail time, a knife-- as in kitchen-- salesman, a man from three generations of film people-- his father made Bible epics in the 1950's but he is reduced to designing bumper stickers. The list goes on. The so-called top-of-the-line prostitutes do not fare much better under Mr. Spencer's observant eye. Four of these women (Icelandic) who meet the hungry men-- he describes as marching in single file, "like four waitresses coming in for the dinner shift." One of them waves, "like someone in a rowboat signalng for help." Another had the "soft sorrowful gaze of a hospice volunteer."

Mr. Spencer is nothing if not a wordsmith. Other examples of his writing prowess: A cafeteria Christian is "someone who helps himself to the easy and attractive parts and ignores those parts that are inconvenient or call for self-sacrifice." Avery has no illusions about his writing assignments, understanding that he is not writing the ODYSSEY and that everything he writes for a newspaper or magazine ultimately will wind up in the bottom of a bird cage. He knows "where the caged bird "c--ps." One character gives a "silent double entendre." Another character Avery describes as someone who looks like a "youngish widow, pleasantly surprised by how far her late husband's pension could be stretched with a few small economies." I can think of no contemporary writer better at describing place than Mr. Spencer. His descriptions of the cities the sex tour takes these men to are a joy to read, particularly his account of Riga.

A major flaw of this otherwise successful novel, however, is the ending (I won't spoil it for the reader) which I found unsatisfactory and unconvincing. I kept wondering how Mr. Spencer could bring this story to a conclusion. With this many balls in the air his task is difficult. Finally Mr. Spencer does not use apostrophes when he writes dialogue; nor does he separate the speakers by paragraphs, a distraction that sometimes makes reading difficult. Even though the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts, WILLING is still well worth reading.

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

The basics are that thirty-seven year old New Yorker Avery Jankowsky, a marginally successful free-lance writer and recently jilted by twenty-something Deirdre, is given by his uncle a berth on a high-end European sex tour, though he seizes on it as an opportunity to write a book on such excursions, and not for personal indulgence.

In actuality, the book is far more commentary on contemporary life: its anonymity, people using each other, the relative nature of presumptions concerning moral behavior, the limitations of sought for pleasures though perpetually alluring, etc. Avery is constantly churning through these kinds of concerns. The author makes note of the disparity of the biological wiring and responses of man geared to meeting maybe 1000 people in his lifetime and the advent of the Internet where a man can examine in intimate detail 1000 women per day and all that may imply or cause. When Avery meets his "hostess" in each city, is her mini-biography, even her name, simply a ruse? Maybe that is what we all are doing: constructing a personal artificiality.

The book is dialog intensive, written in a free-flowing format with little or no punctuation or divisions - but it works. His fellow sex-tour participants, a motley lot, are used mostly as a window into self-held facades and delusions. The main story line, that is, the sex tour, is consistent with the general tone: paying big bucks doesn't necessarily result in no complications or, in this case, unadulterated gratification. There is essentially no plot, but the book is not without its humor. In one case, Avery, definitely sleep-deprived, sends an erotic e-mail to his middle-aged real estate agent who is holding a condo for him that he hopes to pay for with his book deal and feverishly tries to unplug the computer before it goes down the wire.

Ultimately, the book is not especially conclusive. On the other hand, virtually every page has some sort of quirky or insightful observation or description.

***SPOILER REVIEW*** Read no further if you don't want to know the ending...
I just finished this book, and was amazed at how it turned out. I read the other reviews to see if I was on the right track with my interpretation, but no one seems to agree with me. At first I was quite disappointed and confused; the story seemed sloppy, with too many plot holes. Scott Spencer is much better than that! I finally figured out that Avery was seriously injured when he was struck by that car, and the rest of the book represents his dreams while in a coma. Everything is so far-fetched (the huge book deal; the tour itself and the fact that it's a gift, etc.), and it just keeps getting more illogical and dream-like as it goes along (Castle's missing reflection, for example. Plus the ever-increasing, unexplained gaps from one scene to the next, and the frequent use of "the next thing I remember"). At the very end when his mom closes his eyes and reassures him that he'll be home soon - I think that's when he dies. What a very original and creative book (although sad); well worth your time!

I don't know why Scott Spencer always seems to provoke me into posting reviews on Amazon. I guess it's because I know he's such a good writer that I never fail to be disappointed by his books. That is, his plotting never seems to meet the standard set by his prose. The book is highly readable and promising, a story told by Avery, a confused young man who has had four fathers and four names. But then the novel takes a turn, the sex trip to Europe, that ultimately proves so disappointing. It's almost as if Spencer gets our hero to Europe and then realizes that he's locked into that plot. There's nothing wrong with the sex trip--well, there is something wrong morally, but not in a literary sense--but the trip becomes so claustrophobic that the reader just wants to get poor Avery out of there. And Spencer never avails himself of that opportunity. Rather, he employs a bizarre deus ex machina that left me (and, I see from the reviews, lots of readers) cold. Even then, it seems, Spencer might have rescued Avery from banality, but the ending feels as if he just gives up. Don't get me wrong now; I read to the end and that always says something good about a book. So a disappointed three stars seem just about right. But I will look forward to Spencer's next.

Scott Spencer is a great writer, but 'Willing' is just a good book. This book has such promise, a guy flees a failing relationship plagued by deceit and infidelity by taking his uncle up on an offer for a once in a life time first class sex tour around the world. The lead character grapples with his feelings and emotions as he travels on this tour. At times its profound, and then it can turn almost maddening. The book gathers some great steam only to fail completely in the final act.

Scott Spencer is a great writer, but 'Willing' is just an ok book. This book has such promise, a guy flees a failing relationship plagued by deceit and infidelity by taking his uncle up on an offer for a once in a life time first class sex tour around the world. The lead character grapples with his feelings and emotions as he travels on this tour. At times its profound, and then it can turn almost maddening. The book gathers some great steam only to fail completely in the final act.

Spencer has one of the best endings I've read in his book "Men in Black", but here he has a deus ex machina event that just doesn't work and ultimately denigrates a fairly strong effort. In many ways Willing is an incomplete book with a whiplash ending. Spencer is better than this and so that's what makes reading this book all the more frustration. As I've said with other great writers and books that have missed their mark... What happened to the editor? The book was released by Harper Collins, not too shabby of a publisher, and yet no one saw that the gem of this book gets cracked by a truly awful ending?

I have read at least seven books by Scott Spencer. For my money, he's one of the best writers living. One reason I like his writing is that he often writes about a guy just like me, striving, disappointed in himself, and hoping for redemption in romance. I never thought I'd write a negative review of his work.

Spencer wields near-godlike skills of description, especially of his characters' inner perceptions. In his previous books, this ability enriched his story telling. In this book, I am sorry to say, describing inner perceptions is nearly all he does, and the result is maddening on Busy Reader.

The story starts off well, with many interesting threads attached. The protagonist, Avery's breakup with his girlfriend and general breakdown propel him toward life-changing events, or so I expected. One-third of the way into the book, the story disappears completely. All interesting threads are cut, never to be revisited. We are left with page after page of Avery's mumbling thoughts. Did he feel this way or that way? And was that because of A, B, C, . . . X? Other people may as well not exist, and indeed, the other characters flash in and out of the book like popping balloons.

Avery's interminable, self-absorbed musing destroys my concern for him, and Spencer offers no sympathetic character to replace him and make me care what happens next. The story literally drags onto the last page, where the book simply ends, with no conclusion of any kind.

Scott Spencer, you are a great writer. Please take care of your work, and make it great again!

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......

This writer came highly recommended and apparently was quite a charmer on a recent NPR interview. I got this book for Christmas and thought the premise sounded fantastic, but boy, I was pretty disappointed in the execution. There are several plotlines that just seem to vanish or get resolved as afterthoughts: the harried last minute phone call with the girlfriend before he gets on the plane for the tour; the sexually graphic correspondence with a real estate agent; the book contract. Then the whole thing turns out to be about the narrator and his mother. Huh? As for the prose, it was solid but far from exceptional for me. I think part of the problem was that the narrator was kind of passive and just not very likable. To me it seemed like Simpson came up with a cool idea for a novel but just didn't seem to have the emotional or intellecutal mojo to pull it off. This was a disappointing introduction to a writer who is supposed to be great. Maybe I will try again; maybe not.