Lowboy

Lowboy
by John Wray
p. 2009

I picked this book up on a whim and although I have mixed feelings about it on the whole, I’m extremely glad I did because I think I may have discovered a new writer to look out for in John Wray.

Lowboy is the story of 16-year-old William Heller—a paranoid schizophrenic nicknamed Lowboy—after he escapes from a mental institution where he has been kept since an incident with his girlfriend, Emily, a year previous. Will takes to the New York subway system—the scene of his fateful episode with Emily, who later joins him on his journey as he tries to ‘stop the world from ending.’ Will is a man on a mission; he holds all the answers but none of them make sense to the people in his orbit, not even to his worried and troubled mother, Violet, Will’s sole family member and the one who is closest to understanding his condition.

Lowboy also tells Violet’s story as she alternately collaborates and collides with Ali Lateef, a missing persons investigator determined to track down Will before he does something violent, for Lateef is sure the boy is a powder keg waiting to explode and that Violet is keeping secrets from him. Violet is not so sure of her son’s ill intentions, and insists on tagging along with the detective to ensure her the boy’s safe return home.

There are some twists and turns in this novel. The revelation about Violet was not particularly surprising to me, as there was plenty of evidence in the language that she was hiding something. I also saw the ending coming, but it didn’t make it any easier. I have a hard time figuring out what Wray was trying to accomplish with this ending. It’s so stark and devastating and really tough to crack for someone who doesn’t think like Will Heller. I would have come away from this book wondering ‘what’s the point?’ but one quality keeps me coming back to the positive side:

I am absolutely in love with John Wray’s character descriptions. The novel had a tendency to meander, but Wray’s language repeatedly brings you back to the center, grounds you in the moment. I could so perfectly picture every movement and interaction of Violet and Lateef and Will and Emily and in a book where dialogue was often a riddle, body language is so important. Even his descriptions of the New York subway system—so lovingly vivid—helped give the novel an identity by making the subway a character in itself. For someone like myself who hyperfocuses on characters and dialogue, everything in Lowboy resonated for its realness. I may not understand what Wray’s overall intentions with this novel were, but his writing style is enough to keep me coming back for more. Sadly, he only has three novels to his name, so there is not a whole lot more to come back to, but I anticipate them all the same.