Austinist Review: Will Clarke's The Worthy
It’s not clear whether Will Clarke has made a pact with Mephistopheles or participated in a Wiccan prose-enriching ritual to produce his two novels, but that’s really none of our business. His latest novel, The Worthy: A Ghost’s Story, is a bizarre treat that benefits from supernatural forces, seriously.
The Worthy is the first person narrative of Conrad Avery Sutton III. This could just have been the tale of a privileged guy and the pain of conforming to fraternity life at LSU, but to be perfectly honest, that would suck. Clarke, being a deft writer, implants a contrary twist at the novel’s start to ensure that this story won’t suck: Conrad is a ghost. A disembodied spirit trying to exact revenge on the sadistic, Abercrombie-bag model, frat boy who prematurely ended his life---now that’s quality fiction.
The book’s start is imbued with a tension that doesn’t ease until the last page. Just hours away from his formal initiation into Gamma Chi, Conrad is thrown down a flight of stairs by chapter president Ryan Hutchins. Conrad’s vindictive plans suffer from the constraints of ghosthood, but those constraints make for a plot that is as surprising as it is odd. Some of the characters that help drive the temporal action include a possess-able goliath, a clairvoyant cook, a stigmatic bible thumper, and a very unfortunate goat.
Readers will find an equal amount of laughing and cringing throughout The Worthy. The book’s dark humor and morbid subject matter prove that depravity and hilarity would be drinking buddies if they were human. It's a fun, fast read, and Clarke’s writing style lends a cinematic quality to the action. It is important to note that the ending is weird, almost exactly like the end of the Guns ‘n Roses "Don’t Cry" video is weird. Good, but weird.
The Worthy: a Ghost's Story
by Will Clarke
(Simon & Schuster; $23.00)
