Shy -- Max Porter, Hardcover

A novel about guilt, rage, imagination, and boyhood, about being lost in the dark and learning you're not alone

This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy.

You mustn't do that to yourself Shy. You mustn't hurt yourself like that.

He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him.

Got your special meds, nutcase?

He is escaping Last Chance, a home for "very disturbed young men," and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past, and the heavy question of his future.

The night is huge and it hurts.

In Shy, Max Porter extends the excavation of boyhood that began with Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and continued with Lanny. But here he asks: How does mischievous wonder and anarchic energy curdle into something more disturbing and violent? Shy is a bravura, lyric, music-besotted performance by one of the great writers of his generation.

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Author: Max Porter
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 05/02/2023
Pages: 136
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781644452295

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2022 pg. 5
Publishers Weekly 03/20/2023
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2023
Booklist 04/15/2023 pg. 22

About the Author
Max Porter is the author of Lanny, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and The Death of Francis Bacon. He lives in Bath with his family