Synopses & Reviews
What You Have Left is an unforgettable story of love, loss, and, most of all, longing.
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 tells her he just needs a little time to clear his head, but thirty years pass before Holly sees her father again -- "time I spent wondering what I'd done to make him leave," she says, "and what I could do to make him come back."
What You Have Left is about a father and daughter trying to make their way back to one another across decades of uncertainty and ambivalence -- all the while hoping to discover that what they have left is worth salvaging. It's also the story of a grandfather bent on suicide, a pioneering female NASCAR driver, a heartbroken amnesiac, a video poker junkie, and assorted other liars, cheaters, and lovers who, despite their best intentions, never quite live up to their own expectations.
Are we doomed to repeat our parents' mistakes? Can lies save love instead of destroying it? Is letting go the same as giving up? Shot through with sly humor and a knowing sympathy for human weakness, What You Have Left takes up these and other questions as it examines the weight of history, the nature of loss, and the possibility of forgiveness. Making use of bold shifts in viewpoint and time, Allison proves a brilliant observer of the emotional legacies handed down from parent to child and the ways loss defines us. This stunning debut brims with an affection for humanity exactly as it is -- in all its ignorance and awareness, its swagger and humility, its despair and hope.
Review
"Though the beautifully drawn characters of
What You Have Left do not understand how their lives draft, fender to bumper, upon each other, the reader can only sit back wondering whether clear driving's ahead, or a seemingly inevitable disaster. This is a masterpiece in writing, and in understanding Nature versus Nurture. We understand that Holly's her mother and father's child whether she wants to be or not. Brutally hilarious and mesmerically tragic,
What You Have Left might be the perfect novel."
-- George Singleton, author of Drowning in Gruel
Review
"Allison's quiet prose gets at a mother's raw nerve, a father's desperate evasions, the daredevil rage of an abandoned daughter, and the anxiety of a husband curbing his own destructive impulses as he gauges the risks of love." -- O, the Oprah Magazine
Review
"Mr. Allison's novel is plainspoken and eloquent in the way that
So Long, See You Tomorrow is plainspoken and eloquent. It's worked up right out of the American grain and speaks to me, direct and true."
-- Richard Ford
Review
"Allison...has a gift for storytelling. He sets his first novel in South Carolina; his characters teeter between mistakes and redemption." -- The Charlotte Observer
Review
"Will Allison's
What You Have Left is written with such vitality, such delicate intensity and clarity of feeling that I wanted it never to end. A story of fast cars and colliding emotions, it runs quicker than a dirt-track car on a Saturday night. The characters are heartbreaking, and absolutely real -- good people spinning out of control."
-- Mark Childress, author of One Mississippi
Review
"The clarity of Will Allison's prose underscores the small, crucial moments when the fate of human beings is decided, on the subtle abacus of hope and accommodation, betrayal and love. He perfectly captures the texture of unstylized American lives."
-- Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint it Black
Review
"Though the beautifully drawn characters of
What You Have Left do not understand how their lives draft, fender to bumper, upon each other, the reader can only sit back wondering whether clear driving's ahead, or a seemingly inevitable disaster. This is a masterpiece in writing, and in understanding Nature versus Nurture. We understand that Holly's her mother and father's child whether she wants to be or not. Brutally hilarious and mesmerically tragic,
What You Have Left might be the perfect novel."
-- George Singleton, author of Drowning in Gruel
Review
"Loss and redemption take center stage in Allison's beautifully written debut novel....Characters' tension-fraught relationships are well played, and Allison is adept at navigating a labyrinthine web of psychological underpinnings. The nonlinear narrative gives Allison a trove of angles, and he nails all of them."
-- Publishers Weekly, starred review
Table of Contents
ContentsChapter One 1991 Holly
Chapter Two 1971 Wylie
Chapter Three 1991 Lyle
Chapter Four 1970 Wylie
Chapter Five 1996 Holly
Chapter Six 2001 Lyle
Chapter Seven 1979 Wylie
Chapter Eight 2007 Holly
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group GuideDiscussion Questions
1. This book doesn't start at the beginning of the story. Why do you think the author sometimes showed you the results of a character's actions before revealing his or her personal history? How might it have changed your ideas about Wylie if we read his side of the story first? How were your feelings about Cal affected by this structure?
2. The only two chapters in the novel that are narrated in the first person are chapter 3 (Lyle 1991) and chapter 8 (Holly 2007). Did it feel different to hear the characters speak for themselves in those chapters, rather than hearing their stories from a third-person narrator? How reliable are Holly and Lyle as narrators? Were there any specific passages that stood out to you in these chapters as particularly unreliable?
3. Discuss the relationship between Wylie and Lyle. Why did Lyle initially lie about having met Wylie (p. 67)? Do you think he had Holly's best interests in mind, or his own? What about his decision to switch car keys with Holly at the end of chapter 3 (p. 77) and take the blame when the police arrive? Was this an act of chivalry, or of self-interest?
4. In chapter 2 (Wylie 1971), we learn about the tragedy that befell Gladys and Lester's new baby, Nat. How do Gladys and Lester act as foils for Maddy and Wylie? Could what happened to baby Nat ever have happened to baby Holly? What evidence can you find that Wylie and Lester are different kinds of fathers? What suggests they are similar?
5. Did you view Wylie's decision to leave Holly with Cal as a selfish, or selfless, act? Is he fit for single parenthood? How do you think Holly's life would have been different if Wylie had raised her? How would she be different?
6. Lyle works in construction, and there are long, detailed passages about the projects he undertakes. How do these descriptions act as metaphors forhis relationships in the book? As he is renovating Cal's home (p. 8), how is this reflected in his relationship with Holly? What about in his relationship with Cal? When he is reinforcing the foundation of the statehouse (p. 112), does the foundation of his relationship with Holly undergo any simultaneous renovation?
7. The walls of Cal's bedroom are made of pecky cypress, a desirable kind of wood that was once considered trash. "What makes pecky hard to find...is that you can't tell if a cypress is infected until you chop down the tree and cut it open (p. 6)." How is the pecky cypress like the Alzheimer's that runs in Cal's family? Why is it meaningful that Cal got the pecky cypress from the scrap pile at his father's sawmill?
8. Is it significant for you that Wylie and Maddy's relationship began while each of them was dating somebody else? How did learning about Dale and Sheila affect how you felt about Wylie and Maddy? Do you think they were really committed to one another?
9. Many of the characters in the novel battle addictions. What are some of the addictions the characters struggle with? Did any characters succeed in overcoming their addictions? How did the addictive personalities of the characters affect their relationships?
10. An interest in car racing seems to be almost genetic in the novel. How do the characters use their mutual interest in racing to remain close to one another? How does it pull them apart? What did you see as Maddy'sprimary obstacles? Did she really have to stop racing when she had Holly? How did the sexism she endured affect her relationship to the sport? Do you think racing will play a role in Claire's future, and, if so, will she have to face the same issues her grandmother faced?
11. When Holly and Wylie are finally reunited in chapter 8 (Holly 2007), Wylie's short-term memory has been jeopardized as the result of a seizure caused by a lifetime of drinking. He is convinced that he tried to contact Holly in recent years but got no response. Holly realizes that without the benefit of short-term memory, he is simply believing what he would like tobe true. In this circumstance, is it the thought that counts? Do youbelieve that Wylie does in fact wish he had contacted Holly sooner?
12. How does car racing act as a metaphor for the relationships in the story? Which ones are going around in endless circles? Who is leading the race in different chapters? Who is trailing behind? Which relationships are more like Wylie's figure-8 races, characters just dodging a head-on collision?
13. Why did Holly steal Wylie's videotapes of his visit with her and Claire (p. 208)? Was this a final act of vengeance against the father that left her? Or did she want the tapes for herself and Claire? Will Wylie even remember?
14. At the end of What You Have Left, what do the characters have left? Is Wylie's memory loss a curse, or a blessing in disguise? Do Lyle and Holly have each other? Does Claire have everything she needs? Are you hopeful for the future of this family?
Enhancing Your Book Club
1. Holly and Lyle come to own an antique mall. Check out some antique auctions online at www.TIAS.com and www.Collectics.com. Or visit an antique fair or flea market in your hometown. For a full list: http://www.fleamarketguide.com/.
2. Cal, Holly, and Lyle met weekly for Bloody Marys. Why not mix up a pitcher for your book club?
1 quart tomato juice
1 cup vodka
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco
lime slices
celery
Mix tomato, vodka, lime juice, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco in a pitcher. Stir and pour into cocktail glasses with ice. Garnish with lime slices and a stalk of celery.
3. After Wylie's accident, he practices CR -- calorie restriction -- to increase his longevity. Learn about calorie restriction at www.calorierestriction.org or www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction.
4. Learn more about Will Allison at www.willallison.com.