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“No two humans see the world in exactly the same way. But it
don’t mean that one is right and one is wrong. William Blake said every eye sees
differently and he’s right, ey? You see and I see. We don’t both need to see
the same thing to be in tune with the universe.”
—Will Henry, The Willow Man
Reviews: The Willow Man
“Edgy, quick, and finely honed, The Willow Man is a novel of incontestable
power and redemption, stylistic grace and beauty.”
—From review by Wynkin de Worde, publisher
“The Willow Man is a wonderful adventure written by a master
storyteller....[it] rivals the Yukon adventures of Jack London.”
—From review by Liam Mac Sheoinin, Irish Edition
“Willow Man is a mythopoeic quest.”
—From review by Nicolas Birns,
Context: A Forum for Literary Arts and Culture
[Editor’s Note: Reviews from other sources have been formatted
and punctuated as necessary for greater legibility.]
Duff Brenna’s fifth novel, The Willow Man, hurtles along in breathless
pursuit of a notorious 18-year-old car thief, Elbert Earl Evans (a.k.a. Triple E), as
he violates Minnesota probation and breaks for Alaska.
On the road north, Triple E adopts the homeless 14-year-old Mercy Jones.
Once in Yukon Territory they find themselves stranded in Whitehorse. There, Triple E locks in
mortal struggle with a powerful, half-crazed sourdough named John Brown who mistakes Mercy
for his long-lost daughter, Mamie.
Brown kidnaps Mercy to the Tombstone Mountains, and the hunted fugitive
Triple E now becomes the hunter, charging into the teeth of a Yukon winter to track Brown
and Mercy down.
On the surface The Willow Man is the tale of a rugged manhunt. Beneath
the surface run deeper currents of courage, devotion, loyalty, love, and a young man’s
quest for personal redemption.
Edgy, quick, and finely honed, The Willow Man is a novel of incontestable
power and redemption, stylistic grace and beauty.
(Copyright Wynkin de Worde. All rights reserved.)
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Expect a lot from the next sentence. Duff Brenna’s new novel, The
Willow Man, rivals the Yukon adventures of Jack London. Since publishing his [third] novel, cult
classic Too Cool, Brenna has established an impressive oeuvre. His last novel, The Altar of
the Body, held up a mocking mirror to the amended American dream: wealth, fame, and everlasting
youth. Brenna’s tender drama of two male, brother-like cousins, George and Mickey, and
Mickey’s older girlfriend, Joy, whose poor mother, Livia, suffers from dementia, is
indelibly marked with genius. In fact, once one reads one of Brenna’s novels, one will be
compelled to read them all.
The Willow Man, Brenna’s fifth novel, is another indelible work of
genius. Its main character, Triple E, is one of the most determined characters in the pantheon
of American literature. Elbert Earl Evans, hence Triple E, is an 18-year-old parolee working
on his uncle’s farm in Minnesota along with his best friend, Lee. Triple E is a bright,
charismatic, and fearless existentialist. Like London’s Buck, Triple E hears the call of
the wild. He and his close (but subordinate) friend, Lee, decide to break parole and head to
the Yukon in their souped-up vintage car they call Agnes Church after Triple E’s late
grandmother. It is a dark, circuitous journey lighted by Brenna’s brilliant prose.
Brenna’s descriptions are epicritical, sharp, and unremitting. He deconstructs the
fictive dream into a proactive reading experience.
The story changes course when Triple E and Lee befriend a homeless mother
and her young daughter who are headed for California. Linda, the mother, and Mercy, the
daughter, have been tragically tossed around in life. Linda is dying and exacts a promise
from Triple E that he’ll look out for Mercy when she’s gone. The beautiful
redheaded Mercy, called Carrots by Triple E, is a singer in the troubadour tradition. She
dreams of performing at the Grand Old Opry.
Much of The Willow Man is related in vivid flashbacks. The story opens in the
great white north with Triple E mulling the robbery of a trapper named John Brown. Triple E
believes Brown, the Willow Man of the title, has prurient designs on Mercy, whom he hears
singing in a local bar and whom he thinks is his deceased daughter, Mamie. Intent on robbing
Brown’s bankroll, Triple E travels to the old man’s cabin, where he sits and
drinks with his host, looking for his chance, but the old man suckers him and leaves him
for dead in the river.
Fortunately, Will Henry, a local Indian, fishes Triple E out of the
freezing current, and humorously renames his catch Tooshow, meaning big white fish in his
Native American tongue. Will Henry, an elderly trapper who in his spare time attends
dentistry school, nurses Tooshow back to health and pledges to help him find the Willow Man,
John Brown, who they learn — as Triple E had anticipated — has kidnapped Mercy.
The Willow Man is a wonderful adventure written by a master storyteller. With
The Willow Man, Brenna has certainly consolidated his position as one of our best novelists.
(Copyright Liam Mac Sheoinin. All rights reserved.)
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Willow Man is a mythopoeic quest. What might have seemed merely quirky in
Brenna’s past work here becomes visionary. Set in the Canadian North, it resembles a
“Northern” or Arctic Western as described by T. D. MacLulich; but Brenna is a
Southern Californian, and locale matters less than the element of risk in the prose and
action.
This book reminded me of a Larry McMurtry novel rewritten by Paul
Bowles — two writers not renowned for their interest in cold climates. Brenna provides
a glimpse into the urban life of Whitehorse, the Yukon capital, with its Esso® signs and
its “streets full of snow-slush and gravel, crossroads and stoplights.”
Elbert Earl Evans, “Triple E,” is the guardian of Mercy,
a teenage waif who is kidnapped by John Brown and taken away northward. The moral balance
is not a clear one — John Brown refrains, unlike Triple E, from pursuing a sexual
relationship with Mercy.
Both men seem to be retracing an elemental quest into the Arctic,
one the pursued, the other the pursuer; but they both unknowingly pursue an aspiration
towards a more enlightened treatment of women and a spiritual acknowledgment of the idea
of “woman.” Yet their machismo is not satirized or scorned, but embraced for the
way it incarnates the “unvanquished.”
Brenna, unusually, combines a lyrical intensity with a tatterdemalion
scruffiness. Many writers today try for this in a formulaic way, as if it could be
achieved by taking something from column A and column B. Brenna genuinely achieves this
mystical equipoise, because he is fully committed to his characters — not in a
Tolstoyan sense, but in a radical way which incorporates overt fictiveness. There is so
much in the texture here, for instance in Mercy’s occasional songs, one of which begins
“melancholy as a castrated cat.”
(Copyright Nicolas Birns. All rights reserved.)
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