“WILLNOT" by James Sallis - review

 “Willnot” by James Sallis:

“Fish die belly upward and rise to the surface. It’s their way of falling.”

This quote by André Gide might serve to describe this moment of realization, when reality isn’t quite what it used to be the moment before, when unnoticed, a rupture tore through its fabric and something isn’t quite right, something has shifted.

WILLNOT starts in the form of a suspense novel with four bodies found in a pit. We soon learn, though that this is not a suspense novel, it doesn’t follow the rules of one. What it is defies easy classification, it is genre bending.

There is no hunt, there is no whodunnit and after a while the four bodies get lost in oblivion, like rocks being thrown into a pond, mud swirled at first and then slowly settled. 

WILLNOT is an interesting puzzle. It leaves several questions unanswered by the end and surprisingly this is not frustrating or disappointing.

WILLNOT is a crime story only in pretense where in fact it is a wonderful reflective narrative about the dramas that play out in an American small town, a subtle look on many aspects of small-town life seen through the eyes of Lamar Hale, the local physician and surgeon, who has the gift to follow the souls of people into their past. 

“Life has to be lived in a forward motion but can only be understood retrospectively. “This quote from Kierkegaard illuminates the dilemma of Lamar Hale. He is caught between the future and the past, almost like a time traveler who is caught in an infinity-loop and this (and his profession) makes him a silent, attentive observer of the boundaries between life and death.  

Lamar is a decent doctor, thoughtful and compassionate, who lives together with his romantic partner Richard, a teacher, in quiet domestic circumstances while around them chaos in form of the town life, colleagues, patients, friends, acquaintances, a cast of memorable characters, revolves. It is a complex and nuanced environment, by terms world-weary and life-affirming. Lamar feels and makes us feel that there is a layer of a world beneath the surface, beneath appearance. 

The prose is reduced, nevertheless poignant and vivid with a shimmering rustic poetry and captures well the way people think, speak and interact. The tone often is noir-ish, snappy, sharp, laconic and interspersed with philosophical oberservations. Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard and Adorno are mentioned, there are existential musings on life, illness, impotence and death.

Why are we reading? One answer to this is that in reading we get a sense of the lives we can’t or won’t have. 

WILLNOT is a book that gives us this sense. 

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