Review of What You Have Left by Will Allison

Will Allison’s debut novel, What You Have Left, tracks the everyday struggles of a family in their search for why they never succeeded in having the life they planned for. The novel flawlessly spans 37 years from one decade to the next and back again. It rotates through different endearing speakers in the revelation of why their good intentions and best-laid plans resulted in years of self-destruction and what remains to be salvaged.

The collapse begins when, at the age of five, Holly Greer is left to live with her grandfather, Cal. Her mother recently died and her father can’t find it in himself to take care of her. After promising he will be back in a couple of days, he never returns, leaving Holly to obsessively speculate on why her father did not want to be with her and wondering who will answer her questions when her grandfather won’t. Cal consistently falls back on a Hubert Humphrey quote when faced with Holly’s questions—“My friend, it’s not what they take away from you that counts; it’s what you do with what you have left.” After her grandfather’s death, Holly realizes she will never understand the truth of why her life ended up so out of control unless she finds her father.

The book uncovers the whole story through the views of Holly, her father, Wylie, and her husband, Lyle. They subsequently reveal that, though they are all in some way to blame for the outcome of their situation, they truly are good people who still have a chance at the happiness they had thought hopeless. Allison channels each character’s voice leaving no doubt that they are different but struggling with the same conflicts, maintaining the novel’s flow and fusing each view into one solid account of how they ended up not only in their situation but as the people they are today. For a debut novel, Allison impeccably holds his reader’s attention with a constant unpredictability of what will knock the family off their course next. Even though he is often telling the same element of the story three different ways—each character having a say on how the event impacted their life—the book is never bogged down with repetition. Allison presents believable characters enveloped in the true South Carolina culture of the Confederate flag, video gambling, and Nascar. The American south gracefully serves as the backdrop to this uncommon retelling of the age-old search for a place in the world and to understand what we come from.

What You Have Left is a fresh take on the human need to discover our roots, the sheer, dumb hope of regaining a love lost, and the unending bonds of family. This brilliant first novel will no doubt solidify Will Allison’s inevitable celebrity in American literature.

By Alyson Waldrop