Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Review: Lowboy
Lowboy, by John Wray is a novel about a schizophrenic teenager who calls himself Lowboy. There are two main threads to the story, that of Lowboy who escapes his handlers in a subway station into the tunnels themselves, and that of his mother and the police officer assigned to find him.
I enjoyed the novel a great deal. The Lowboy thread helped me to understand what having Lowboy's condition might feel like, the constant shifting of attentions and the extrasensory feelings he was having, without alienating me from him. The mother thread both grounded the novel and provided a background of normality against which the Lowboy thread was juxtaposed.
The characters in the book are vivid. Lowboy himself is neurotic but never alien. His mother, seen through the police officer's eyes, is alien but not unwelcome. The police officer, seen through the mother's eyes, is predictable but not boring. There are other, peripheral, characters. They are well-drawn and never feel like they exist to expose some facet of a main character or to move the plot along.
The only disappointments I had with the novel came within the last 5 to 10 pages. The ending is not quite as clear-cut as I was hoping, and the 'twist' doesn't have a mind-blowing effect. On the other hand, the ending fits with the rest of the book perfectly, and the lack of a 'twist' means that rereading the novel in future will remain interesting, so the disappointment was not too great.
I recommend reading this wholeheartedly. As with The Sound of Building Coffins, anyone I know should feel free to ask to borrow it.
Posted: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:00 | | Comments: 2