Lowboy
By John Wray
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

I’d venture to say John Wray has written a very compelling 258 page novel…though I’m not so sure what it’s all about. Yes, in some ways it’s a rather straight forward telling of a young man’s mental state. In another sense Lowboy is a paranoid journey into the fantastic ‘twilight’ of a city’s tunnels and streets. In another sense it’s a…

I love books like this. I’m very fond of non-linear story telling even when it is seemingly linear as it is in Lowboyy. That’s the trick here, Wray has a deciding great eye for detail but he manages, epically at the beginning of the book to keep you off balance. Wray makes it about more than just his language and the narrator’s point of view, it’s really how the whole journey’s structure that keeps the reader deep in Will’s mind, a protagonist who believes he holds a deep planet-saving secret.

I like all the characters we meet in Lowboy too, Will’s mom Violet, Emily Wallace, it’s a pretty rich short little book. If you like to be shook a bit, get deep into one character’s rather odd world view and not really know what’s happening at any given moment, John Wray handles it all masterfully in this odd story part sci-fi parable, part mental health drama, part love story.

Give Lowboy a glance.

Ralph Greco, Jr.