Willow, by Julia Hoban, OR Why Pay for Therapy When You Could Have a Boyfriend?

I want to hate this book. I really, really do. The fact that I don't hate it makes me seriously concerned.

Let’s start with the least problematic aspect: I really disliked Hoban’s (or her editor’s) comma usage. There were several points where the lack of commas interfered with clarity. I also spotted a few other errors like missing spaces, so she should get a better copy editor (I’ll go out on a limb and volunteer myself since I could use a job).

Working my way up from there, the next troubling aspect was the poor use of Shakespeare, particularly The Tempest. It’s used as a clumsy plot device, and it’s not done so by someone who understands it. Though not the biggest Shakespeare fan around, I do think that he had some fantastic plots and themes and (this is the big one) competing discourses. When we’re presented with The Tempest and told only that it’s “romantic,” that really discredits all the other themes running through the play. Even worse, Hoban doesn’t even entertain the possibility that Early Modern Drama might not have the same conception of romance that we have today (for those who are wondering, it doesn’t. Not even close).

Next problem, which is an extremely serious one from my point of view: gender roles! Guy (yes, the male love interest's name is Guy) only likes Macbeth because he’s male? Yikes. So much for the universality of literature. And it killed me to have to suffer through lines like “I hoped that there would be a time when I would need to…protect you like this” (299). Ugh. Male as protector and savior, that’s nothing new. (Aside on this quote: from my perspective, there are two ways of reading it. Either Guy is referring to having a condom as his way of protecting Willow—which, though a bit paternalistic, is good, since I’m all for safe sex—or he’s referring to the act of sex itself as protecting Willow from her cutting. Not a big fan of the second reading, but it seems to be the more likely of the two.) Unfortunately, Hoban’s choice to deal with cutting as a subject matter makes this even more problematic than other books (like Sarah Dessen’s) that frequently have a male as a savior figure.

This leads me to my next concern. Ultimately, Willow isn’t able to save herself—Guy has to save her from herself. Guy is responsible for keeping Willow from cutting, and he is also responsible for trying to make her stop. And in the resolution, it’s having sex with Guy that gives Willow the ability to stop cutting and work towards resolving her conflicts with her brother. I have no problems with sex in YA lit, and many authors pull it off wonderfully. Unfortunately, this novel never seems to address Willow’s sexuality. Instead, sex is simply another alternative to cutting, another way to feel, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want people thinking about sex like that. And in the end, Willow doesn’t need psychological help to deal with her cutting. She just needs a boy.

Despite all of the above, I liked the book. I didn’t realize it was written in third person until I was almost done with it, which shows how close Hoban is able to bring the reader to Willow. All of Willow’s emotions are strong and real and subtle, but clear.

Quite frankly, I’m even more concerned about the book because I did love it. If the characters were flat and uninspiring, if the plot wasn’t engaging, if we didn’t care about Willow—then there would be no danger in all of Hoban’s messages. We could dismiss the book as a whole. But since we can’t, we have to be sure that we make explicit the problematic assumptions Hoban makes about gender, sexuality, and mental illness. Because maybe a young 14-year old who’s cutting won’t be able to see how it’s problematic—she’ll just see that she needs to go have sex with a boy and then everything will be better.

This reads like a lit paper. Making explicit problematic assumptions? You can take the English major out of lit classes, but you can't take the lit classes out of the English major.