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A review by culottes
Willy by Robert Dunbar
5.0
I really had to think about this one.
When I started this book, I was really kind of on the fence. While I understood the concept, and, in turn, the stream-of-consciousness and seemingly unedited writing style, it was hard to focus on what was going on. I had to keep going back and reading things. As someone with not a whole lot of time and not much patience, this irked me. Still, I was pretty determined – having heard high praises of this book and drawn to the elements of queer romance in a horror novel, I kept plugging at it.
Damn, I'm so happy I did.
The premise is: our unnamed protagonist and unreliable narrator, who I'm going to call X from now on, is dropped without preamble at night in the middle of the term at a school for "wayward youths." The narrator feels so isolated and alone in his world that the only way he can make sense of it is to keep a journal – the book. He writes in it constantly, much to the bemusement of others. After some time of the narrator navigating this school alone and lost, enter his roommate, Willy - strange, highly intelligent, charismatic, idealistic. Other boys at school are drawn to him, and none more than the narrator. The two of them form an extremely close bond. From there, things seem kind of fun, the narrator comes out of his shell, boyhood antics and shenanigans abound.
Then things take a very sinister turn. Villains become heroes become villains again. Innocence and guilt, delusion and reality, truth and lies: they all blend together. There's only one thing we can be certain of, and it's that Willy is not who we believe him to be, but we can't be sure what he is.
Dunbar paints a masterful picture. The book is full of atmosphere. When seen through the eyes of a young man with an unidentified mental illness, reality becomes so blurred that the atmosphere becomes ever more confining. The whole book almost reads like a classic ghost story. The scares are subtle, they're psychological, and they come from the questions that arise: What happened, just now, to that teacher? Why did Willy say that? What does he know that we don't?
Much of our knowledge of Willy's past comes from snippets of conversation the narrator hears while wandering the halls and from a pilfered file that the narrator barely understands before disposing of it. I liked this mysterious way of giving us a different picture of Willy. It was a good way to show one side of Willy we are not privy to, because of the narrator's devotion to him. We know Willy is responsible for something, but we can never be sure what, and we can never be sure if we want to blame him when the only lens we have to frame him through is the narrator's. It's clear Willy did something Very Very Naughty – some teachers call him “evil,” another calls him a “monster” - but Willy has freed our narrator, shows him such gentleness and such inspiration that I couldn't find it in me to believe the nastiness. I was so torn.
The romance element is so subtle that I could've missed it, but towards the end, it wrecked havoc with my emotions. I couldn't put the book down because I was so emotionally invested in the narrator. There are allusions to sex and they are so perfectly in line with everything else - I love this even more, because I'd feared we were going to get some hokey four page long love scene, which has its place to be sure, just not in a book like this. Despite wanting to read more novels that break free from the heteronormative mainstream novels we find out in the world, I was also quite refreshed to see that neither the narrator nor Willy seemed to have any doubts or questions about what was happening between them. There was no “gay panic,” no weird confessions where someone says, “Just so you know, I'm gay.” If someone wanted to read it without that romantic subtext, it could be done – although I argue it would be eliminating a key part of the story – because it isn't so out there that Dunbar is shoving down our throats.
Basically, it all just comes off as so extremely natural.
I love horror. Everyone knows this about me, it is a fundamental part of my personality. I like to be scared. The only problem is, it's getting increasingly hard to scare me. Gore, demons, murderers – I can read about these things, turn out the lights, and sleep unplagued by nightmares. It takes a lot to knock me off-kilter. Willy did exactly that for me. It does everything right. While it raises more questions than it answers – something that I find infinitely frustrating – it does so entirely because we are reading a story from the point of view of someone who lives in a reality separated from our own. As such, his reality becomes ours and it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what is the truth. It is from this questioning of the truth that my fear came from. How can I be confident, when I don't know who to trust anymore?
All I know is, I kind of love Willy – the book and the character. That's the only truth I could pick from the book. That, and it fucked me up for a few days. Actually, I'm still kinda fucked up about it. My coworkers are sick of hearing it. I told my mom to read it. I stayed up until 3am reading and tried to sleep off my confusion, only to wake up more unsure than ever.
I'll read this book again for sure, to answer all my questions, but also to just ride the roller coaster again. 5/5 stars without question – any book that can make my heart pound like that has really earned it.
When I started this book, I was really kind of on the fence. While I understood the concept, and, in turn, the stream-of-consciousness and seemingly unedited writing style, it was hard to focus on what was going on. I had to keep going back and reading things. As someone with not a whole lot of time and not much patience, this irked me. Still, I was pretty determined – having heard high praises of this book and drawn to the elements of queer romance in a horror novel, I kept plugging at it.
Damn, I'm so happy I did.
The premise is: our unnamed protagonist and unreliable narrator, who I'm going to call X from now on, is dropped without preamble at night in the middle of the term at a school for "wayward youths." The narrator feels so isolated and alone in his world that the only way he can make sense of it is to keep a journal – the book. He writes in it constantly, much to the bemusement of others. After some time of the narrator navigating this school alone and lost, enter his roommate, Willy - strange, highly intelligent, charismatic, idealistic. Other boys at school are drawn to him, and none more than the narrator. The two of them form an extremely close bond. From there, things seem kind of fun, the narrator comes out of his shell, boyhood antics and shenanigans abound.
Then things take a very sinister turn. Villains become heroes become villains again. Innocence and guilt, delusion and reality, truth and lies: they all blend together. There's only one thing we can be certain of, and it's that Willy is not who we believe him to be, but we can't be sure what he is.
Dunbar paints a masterful picture. The book is full of atmosphere. When seen through the eyes of a young man with an unidentified mental illness, reality becomes so blurred that the atmosphere becomes ever more confining. The whole book almost reads like a classic ghost story. The scares are subtle, they're psychological, and they come from the questions that arise: What happened, just now, to that teacher? Why did Willy say that? What does he know that we don't?
Much of our knowledge of Willy's past comes from snippets of conversation the narrator hears while wandering the halls and from a pilfered file that the narrator barely understands before disposing of it. I liked this mysterious way of giving us a different picture of Willy. It was a good way to show one side of Willy we are not privy to, because of the narrator's devotion to him. We know Willy is responsible for something, but we can never be sure what, and we can never be sure if we want to blame him when the only lens we have to frame him through is the narrator's. It's clear Willy did something Very Very Naughty – some teachers call him “evil,” another calls him a “monster” - but Willy has freed our narrator, shows him such gentleness and such inspiration that I couldn't find it in me to believe the nastiness. I was so torn.
The romance element is so subtle that I could've missed it, but towards the end, it wrecked havoc with my emotions. I couldn't put the book down because I was so emotionally invested in the narrator. There are allusions to sex and they are so perfectly in line with everything else - I love this even more, because I'd feared we were going to get some hokey four page long love scene, which has its place to be sure, just not in a book like this. Despite wanting to read more novels that break free from the heteronormative mainstream novels we find out in the world, I was also quite refreshed to see that neither the narrator nor Willy seemed to have any doubts or questions about what was happening between them. There was no “gay panic,” no weird confessions where someone says, “Just so you know, I'm gay.” If someone wanted to read it without that romantic subtext, it could be done – although I argue it would be eliminating a key part of the story – because it isn't so out there that Dunbar is shoving down our throats.
Basically, it all just comes off as so extremely natural.
I love horror. Everyone knows this about me, it is a fundamental part of my personality. I like to be scared. The only problem is, it's getting increasingly hard to scare me. Gore, demons, murderers – I can read about these things, turn out the lights, and sleep unplagued by nightmares. It takes a lot to knock me off-kilter. Willy did exactly that for me. It does everything right. While it raises more questions than it answers – something that I find infinitely frustrating – it does so entirely because we are reading a story from the point of view of someone who lives in a reality separated from our own. As such, his reality becomes ours and it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what is the truth. It is from this questioning of the truth that my fear came from. How can I be confident, when I don't know who to trust anymore?
All I know is, I kind of love Willy – the book and the character. That's the only truth I could pick from the book. That, and it fucked me up for a few days. Actually, I'm still kinda fucked up about it. My coworkers are sick of hearing it. I told my mom to read it. I stayed up until 3am reading and tried to sleep off my confusion, only to wake up more unsure than ever.
I'll read this book again for sure, to answer all my questions, but also to just ride the roller coaster again. 5/5 stars without question – any book that can make my heart pound like that has really earned it.