Author(s): Max Porter

Novel

From the best-selling author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny - the polyphonic story of a troubled teenager, with all of the humanity and trademark invention we expect from one of our most exciting writers. Things keep slipping up for Shy. All he wants is sex, spliffs and his own turntables, and for all the red noise in his mind to disappear. But again and again he spirals past his senses and ends up with his head in his hands and carnage around him. You mustn't do that to yourself, Shy. You mustn't hurt yourself like that. He's been kicked out of two schools, been cautioned, arrested, stabbed his step-dad in the finger and bottled a former Tumble Tots playmate, but it's the taunts and teasing of his new schoolmates that haunt Shy. Shy's got no armpit hair / Shy needs fake ID to buy fags / Got your specialmeds, nutcase? At Last Chance - a home for 'very disturbed young men' - he is surrounded by people who want to help him, but his night terrors aren't getting any better. The night is huge and it hurts. So tonight he's stepping into it, with the haunted beginnings of a plan.

In Shy, Max Porter again shows an incredible ability to get completely inside the head of his narrator, his spare and unconventionally effective prose delivering us an experience that enlarges our empathy and understanding. Shy is a young man who is both damaged and damaging, troubled and troubling, inmate of the residential institution Last Chance but also creature of a pervasive trope of masculinity. Shy is suffering; people want to help him, but can he be helped? What can he find inside him that can help him find his footing? An affecting and humane short novel, presented as a beautiful hardback. >>Absolute horror at the political present.
>>Men and masculinity.
>>Lucky.
>>Entering the hinterland.
>>His father’s voice.
>>Are novels miniature villages?
>>Pebbles.
>>Read our reviews of Lanny.
>>Read Thomas's review of The Death of Francis Bacon.
>>Grief Is the Thing With Feathers.

Max Porter's first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers,won the Sunday Times/Peters, Fraser + Dunlop YoungWriter of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize,the Europese Literatuurprijs and the BAMB Readers'Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First BookAward and the Goldsmiths Prize. His second novel, Lanny,was a Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for theBooker Prize. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He has previously worked as a bookseller and editorand has also written The Death of Francis Bacon, the shortfilm All of this Unreal Time and the pamphlet It's Going toBe a Bright New Day.