Customer Reviews

Lowboy: A Novel

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

After reading the Sunday Times I was eager to get my hands on this book. The notion of detailing the psychology of a teenage schitzophrenic appealed to me because of the sheer challenge such a project would entail - an attempt to express the ineffable, if you will. It is difficult to argue that Wrey succeeds in his effort, since I have no personal experiance with schitzophrenia, but the psychology that he does map out in this underground world (so to speak) is nothing short of impressive.

One has to applaud Wrey not only for the control of his prose and the range of his strokes, but also for all the subtleties that bring out the character of the protagonist and of the city he exists in. For instance, the setting is the New York City subway, which, like public transportation systems in most major cities, is filled with that strange sense of "otherness." The subway itself has that schitzophrenic, "wasteland" (in the TS Eliot sense of the word) surreality. It's like looking well under the cracks of society, and, in effect, finding the unstable essence underneath. There are other subtle aspects of the narrative that work to same effect (like ciphers embedded in the text, or the ebb and flow of the structure), but I probably shouldn't spoil these things for others.

There were a couple of instances where I felt a little enclosed in the simple, declarative style of minimalism that Wrey wrote in. On the other hand, the decision to do seems fitting and appropriate; that is, symptomatic of the protagonist's incapacitating schitzophrenia. Other times the way that Wrey describes the surreality of this almost hallucinogenic world has a poetic edge that is on point.

I wouldn't say that this is my favorite novel, or the best written novel, and certainly not a novel for everyone, but it is a fantastic display of literary sense.



I called this review "sad but true" because this novel, in its entirety, really is sad when you conisder it, but it's also true, especially given the social stigma that sorrounds mental illness. To try and write a novel that handles such subject matter fairly is a kind and sympathetic gesture.

This is just by far the novel of the year for me--profound and beautiful and edge-of-your-seat thrilling at the same time. Where did this John Wray come from? I hadn't heard about either of his other two novels, although the critics seem to have gone ga-ga over them, too. I can't gush over this book enough. I was so entertained and entranced reading it that at one point I didn't even realize I was crying. I just flipped over this thing. Did I mention that it's also really funny?

Having stumbled upon this novel quite by accident, I was mesmerized by the story of a psychotic adolescent who has escaped from a mental institution and his mother's frantic efforts to save him or to save anyone whom he might harm in a story that covers just a little over 24 hours.

Many parts of the book are told through the paranoid schizophrenic eyes of the beautiful 16-year old boy, adding a great deal of realism to the tragic yet hopeful story. Wray has apparently accomplished a great deal of insight into the mind of paranoid schizophrenia as well as the mind of innocent youth throughout the world.

Woven into this thrilling story is the beautiful and enigmatic mother and the thoughtful and provocative detective she hires to catch the boy before he harms himself or someone in his way to accomplish what he must accomplish to save the world.

Reserve some time for this novel because once you start reading it, you won't be able to put it down.

It's inevitable that John Wray's LOWBOY be compared with Mark Haddon's THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. The difference, it seems to me, is that Haddon had experience working with autistic children. I never got that sense with Wray's book.

A review on the back cover of LOWBOY refers to the main character, Will Heller, as "a hero as three-dimensional as any in recent fiction." Ironically, that's the problem I had with the book. All of the characters seemed flat to me, including Will. Most of the time, Will doesn't seem all that schizophrenic. Sure he tries to mate with a bag lady, and he has a delusion that if he has sex he can stop the destruction of the earth through global warming, but in other respects he doesn`t do that much except ride the subway and bump into denizens of the deep who aren`t that interesting either. Even his nickname, Lowboy, is a kind of furniture. Emily, his girlfriend, may have some emotional problems of her own. Will originally gets in trouble because she tried to hug him and he pushed her onto the subway tracks because he didn't like being touched. But she comes back for more, apparently because Will looks a lot like Brad Pitt. At one point she tells Will that he should never wear pants, but then she freaks out when he gets serious. The detective in the story, Ali Lateef, who is trying to track Will down, seems more interested in Will's mother, Violet. About the only surprise in the story is Violet's so-called secret.

The minor characters are even less interesting. Skull and Bones, Will's attendants before his escape onto the subway, are practically invisible. Heather Covington, the bag lady Will meets in the subway tunnels, is pretty much a stereotype.

I cannot think of one character I could identify with and that wasn't the case with Haddon's book. Christopher Boone inspires empathy; when Christopher was afraid, I was afraid. Mark Haddon put me in Christopher's shoes. That doesn't happen in Wray's book.

In John Wray's novel, Lowboy, William Heller, a paranoid schizophrenic teenager, has stopped taking his medication and has escaped from his school (asylum) into the New York subway system. William, also known as Lowboy, is on a mission to save the world from destruction which according to him is on a short timetable. Will has a plan but to fully execute it he needs to find the one girl that will "cool him down" and save the world from global warming.

The story is mainly narrated by Will, who in this case, tells it from the fugitive's point-of-view. Most of Will's journey takes place on the subway and in the tunnels, only going out of the subway system when absolutely necessary. The chapters narrated by Will takes the reader into the mysterious thinking of the brain of someone who is sinking deeper and deeper into mental illness. Mr. Wray has done a very good job of making Will a very likeable hero. The alternate chapters are narrated by a missing person's detective assigned to the case, Ali Lateef, who is accompanied by Will's mother, Violet Heller. As this is a different type of missing person case, Violet helps provide information to assist in finding Will before he becomes violent as the experts predict. These chapters have the feeling of a police procedural, as Ali races against time. But, as Ali puts the pieces of the puzzle together, he realizes that there is much more to Violet and her perceptions of the story than she is telling him and may not be the help that he needs.

This story is both tragic and, at times, almost comical as we get to see the world through Will's eyes. Will is aware of the medications leaving his system and from past experiences knows that others sometimes just do not hear him when he speaks, so he is relieved when others acknowledge him unaware that they are usually people who are also mentally ill. One of the most memorable scenes for me is when Will attempts to purchase cupcakes and the store clerks and Will could not effectively communicate with each other for what is a simple task for most of us.

This is a much needed story as mental illness is still a taboo subject in the United States and you will see that we have not made much progress besides making people who suffer from mental illness invisible when they make us uncomfortable. Once I started reading this story I could not put it down as I became engaged with the characters and I was riding the subway along with Will hoping that he would outwit the authorities. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy stories that allow them to explore topics from a different angle. Readers who are interested in the topic of mental illness will also enjoy this story.

Reviewed by Beverly
APOOO BookClub
July 26, 2009

Wray's novel begins with a description of Lowboy running to catch a train. It is just another day in the subways in the bowels of New York City. The prose is clipped - each declarative sentence is meant to lull the reader into a kind of complacency, until on page six, the sentence seems to appear out of nowhere and demands our attention: "Once he'd almost killed someone with just his two bare hands." Soon after, this blonde-haired sixteen-year old young man tells a Sikh on the train. "The world won't make it past this afternoon," and Lowboy subsequently pushes the Sikh, an older man, so that he is "lifted out of his seat like a windtossed paper bag." Now we definitely know something is quite wrong with this picture.

Wray is extremely adept at giving the reader subtle clues, and the reader finds himself privy to the machinations and distorted perceptions of the troubled mind of a young man, a paranoid schizophrenic off his meds, running away from two men from the mental institution from which he has escaped, and who thinks the world will end in ten hours if he does not lose his virginity. The reader learns bits and pieces of the puzzle along the way - ever so subtly - and one is compelled to continue reading. There is a parallel plot involving Ali Lateef, born Rufus Lamarck White, a detective, and Violet Heller, Will's (Lowboy's) extremely enigmatic mother, who is as much a mystery to be solved as is her son. The reader is pulled along inexorably, albeit gently, to the novel's conclusion, and one feels privileged to have been given a glimpse into Lowboy's convoluted and distorted perceptions, as well as a glimpse into the complex identities of Ali, Violet, and Emily, a friend of Lowboy's who is connected to his institutionalization.

I don't believe I will ride a NY subway again without thinking of Lowboy and his underground odyssey to single-handedly save the world from extinction. Reading this novel is a trip I would highly recommend.

I so wanted to love this book. I wanted it all the way to the end. And yet when I arrived my gut said, "I told you so."

There are so many things to recommend the novel, I'll list them before saying anything else. First of all, the writing is excellent. The characters are also fantastic; it's hard to say which I liked best. Wray's depiction of a mind in the grip of mental illness (particulars left unnamed to avoid spoilers) is impressive. And, finally, Wray paints the landscape underneath New York City as beautifully as does Woody Allen aboveground. Truly, he's made a valentine to the NYC subway system.

Unfortunately, the "big secret" revealed at the end was no surprise to me: the hints had felt so heavy-handed, I'd guessed it at least a third of the way through. In retrospect, then, the pace is annoyingly slow. Finally, Wray's choice for the protagonist's obsession is profoundly disappointing: it dates the novel in such a way that the obsession will soon acquire an interpretation that seems unintended. It already feels "so last decade"!

I do not like the fact that Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin: A Novel is listed close to _Lowboy_, because I think the former - while also a tribute to New York City - is a crown jewel of a novel.

All that said, if you like discovering talented new writers, this book might be for you. A very quick read, it will give you a taste of a new author whose work may be well worth pursuing.

Mr. Wray has crafted a funny, disturbing novel that takes us in the mind of a young schizophrenic man on a life altering journey. Mr. Wray's writing style is very inventive. In alternating chapters we are in the mind of young man and the detective that is chasing him. This is definitely a literary novel. It took a good deal of concentration to follow the young protagonists thought patterns. To say I "liked" this book would not be accurate, I found this book more interesting than likable.

Wray's Lowboy is full of brilliant, exquisite observation. Moments stand perfectly still, yet the narrative races. It makes you want to understand motives that cannot be understood, to put away what you know to be true and embrace Lowboy's logic, the logic of the mentally disturbed.

The plot is deceptively simple: off his meds, Lowboy has fled his keepers and is running around the depths and turns of the New York City subway system. His goal: to save the world by losing his virginity. A missing persons cop gives chase, helped and hindered by Lowboy's mother, whose own illness the cop figures out too late. The narrative alternates points of view, and each character is exquisitely rendered. And yet in the end, when Lowboy's perceptions fracture and his narrative is least trustworthy, and events are like fast-moving silhouettes in the light of sweeping headlights, Wray does not quite achieve the promise of the earlier parts of the book. It's as if the disintegration of the characters causes the narrative to splinter a bit. That said, this is one of the finest novels I've read in ages and ages, worth every penny and second spent on it and with it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It has been a very long time since I have found a new fiction writer who hasn't been predictable, boring, and worth the time it takes to make time to read (for those of us who are limited on reading time, this is important!). When you invest precious time in a novel, you expect it to be worthy of your time. Lowboy is a modern masterpiece. This novel will be a crown jewel in the literary world for years to come, and although I haven't read anything else by John Wray, I'm sure his future works will be compared to this work of art. It's like seeing amazing brush strokes on a canvas the way Wray skillfully and painfully describes "Lowboy's" thoughts and struggles to hold on to even the smallest moments of reality.
My only problem with this novel can be seen as minor to some, major to others. Since Lowboy is obviously diagnosed as a "paranoid schizophrenic" from the moment we begin to learn about him, my nitpicking moment is this...children/adolescents are not diagnosed as "schizophrenic" until they are at least 18 years of age or older. Even though they may obviously be schizophrenic, or on the road to the full blown diagnosis, such a diagnosis is not placed on a child under 18 years of age.
That being said, I'm sure that can be a point of discussion for years to come when this book is discussed and papers are written about it in literature classes in high schools and colleges (and this will be one of those required reading books, mark my words). This book is that good. It is a classic. It is beautiful, and it is amazing.