Willa & Hesper
by Amy Feltman
Grand Central Publishing. 304 pages. $26.
WILLA & HESPER begins unexpectedly, with Willa, the more lyrical and likable of the two main characters, numbly attempting to process an assault in which she was pressed against a tree, pawed by an unidentified male, and then left to wonder why this attack had to happen outside her childhood temple. Today’s readers will key into the political undercurrents of the novel and the rising tide of hatred that crashes upon the characters in later chapters, when the novel, which begins in the middle of the Obama presidency, catches up to the 2016 presidential election. At this early stage, however, the fact of that temple and the fact of Willa’s Judaism are seen through a more intimate, personal lens, with this incident severing her connection to God (permanently, she fears). In the absence of her faith, Willa avoids dealing with her trauma by plunging headlong into a queer relationship with a fellow MFA candidate, Hesper, whose initial loveliness and strangeness give the novel at least a veneer of brightness and happiness.
That this relationship ends quickly and abruptly should come as no surprise, given that Willa initiates it within 24 hours of the incident outside of the temple. Hesper walks out because she’s frightened by how much Willa loves her, and what follows is both predictable and not: Willa falls apart and Hesper starts slipping into a depression that it takes over a hundred pages to identify. Throughout the novel, time expands and contracts around key moments and periods, reducing the breakup to white space and ballooning the subsequent overseas trips (Willa to Germany and Hesper to Tbilisi, Georgia) to half of the book, with day-by-day accounts of the action. This seeming imbalance leads the reader to wonder: is this really a novel about a romance? In the first chapter, the answer seems to be yes, but as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that Feltman was leading the reader somewhere else all along.
That ultimate destination is informed not only by Willa’s religion and Hesper’s revelations about her heritage but also by the history of the Holocaust, the unrest in Eastern Europe, the stark brutality of Soviet Russia, the rise of white supremacism in the U.S., the proliferation of MFA programs, and the gay rights movement. Though the novel begins in a claustrophobic place, it becomes far more expansive, allowing its twenty-something protagonists to flounder, to hurt each other, and to make mistakes as they stumble toward healing. For Hesper, this process is less conscious and deliberate than for Willa, because Hesper is never able to “grip tight enough” to the self-knowledge and insight required for adequate reflection or growth. These character deficiencies make Hesper’s chapters more frustrating but no less beautiful than Willa’s.
In the end, Willa & Hesper is a tender yet unsparing portrait of two young queer women coming of age in a time drenched in confusion and hate. Feltman manages to guide readers through an act of molestation, an intimate romance, a bad breakup, two separate, foolhardy attempts to escape the situation via a trip to Europe, and one MFA program in order to reach a conclusion that is as wise as it is humane. This isn’t to say that the journey to the end is smooth or that readers won’t have to periodically reorient themselves to the text to fully appreciate its vicissitudes. But Feltman’s verbal facility and emotional acuity are enough to guide readers to a satisfactory conclusion.
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