Book Buzz @Bentley

I recently told my mom I was in the middle of this book, and she asked, “Do you like it?” I couldn’t answer her then, and now that I’ve finished it, I’m still not sure I could. More accurately, I would say that I admire the book. John Wray writes his novel from the perspectives of two main narrators: Will “Lowboy” Heller, a sixteen-year-old paranoid schizophrenic who has run away from his mother and a recent institutionalization, and Ali Lateef, the Missing Persons detective assigned to find him.  They’re both completely fleshed-out characters with distinct histories and voices, and I was especially awed by the way Wray represents the way Will sees the world. It might be impossible to know what it’s like inside the mind of someone with schizophrenia, but I think the way Wray approaches it – compassionately, and obviously after extensive research – is the closest I’m going to come. (I wasn’t surprised to find that Wray was named one of Granta magazine’s Best Young Novelists in 2007)

Some of the reviews I’ve read have compared Lowboy to Catcher in the Rye. And they are both about troubled teenage boys roaming New York City, but Lowboy takes Catcher’s theme of alienation to much darker places – literally and figuratively. Much of the novel takes place on the subway, and many of the things that happen to Will are pretty disturbing. Despite this, and despite the one thing I did dislike about the book (a plot twist near the end that didn’t feel surprising or gratifying), I couldn’t stop reading Lowboy. It’s sad and unsettling, but incredibly compelling.

–review by Liz Galoozis, Reference Librarian and Coordinator of User Education

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Wray has been recently profiled by The San Francisco Chronicle (read here).  His work has been reviewed in The New York Times (read here), The New Yorker (read here), The Onion (read here), and on NPR’s All Things Considered (listen here).