Word: lowboyã
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Wray still has plenty of novels left in him, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that his next one will be the one. Even now I’m not complaining. Only hoping. Like I said, I like “Lowboy??—because it’s likable, though, not because it’s great...
...just felt true. He said—and here’s the quote—“It is, in all, a thoroughly modern, calculated public relations enterprise, but its ancient charms are remarkable.” That’s just it: “Lowboy?? is an incredibly competent novel from a young, clearly passionate writer. I want it to succeed. I want him to succeed. But it doesn’t have the feeling of a breakthrough...
...titular “Lowboy?? is William Heller, a 16-year-old paranoid schizophrenic who goes off his meds and goes on a manic journey through the New York City subway system. The contemporary subject-matter is a departure for Wray, whose last two novels have taken place in pre-war Austria and the antebellum South. He told New York Magazine that the more palatable setting pick “had something to do with wanting to survive as a writer. Sooner or later it would be nice if I could make my publisher some money...
Wray lets Will tell his own story half the time, and gives the other half to Detective Ali Lateef, who’s leading the subway-centric manhunt. The novel is ripe with divergent identities: Will and his alter ego, “Lowboy??; his mother Yda and Lowboy??s name for her, “Violet;” Lateef and his given name, “Rufus White.” The alternating perspectives of the narrative themselves constitute a sort of double identity, mirroring the dynamic between the world of institutions above ground...
...question of why write a single one. Sure, he has schizophrenia, but that’s simply a fact of his fictional life no matter how much it tugs at my heartstrings. So—what? If I’m going to invest myself in “Lowboy??—or in John Wray, for that matter—I need to know that his story matters not just to his mother and him. I need to know that it matters...
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