He leaves the room dark. Shy’s room minus Shy. Eve 1965 carved in the beam. A wonky heart carved in the beam. 1891 carved in the beam. Shy 95, fresh and badly scraped in the beam, with a jagged S like a Z. Couldn’t even get that right.
For such a short work, I found Shy to be incredibly affecting. Centred in the brain of a disturbed and confused young man as he sneaks out of a reform school in the dead of night, the story and the sentences and the tone are all off-puttingly disturbed and confusing. We wincingly watch Shy struggling under the weight of a flint-stuffed backpack as he effects his escape, and the many questions that that initiating scenario brings up will eventually be answered by the thoughts and memories and jumbled emotions that swirl uncontrollably through Shy’s mind. His memories are filled with rage and violence and uncontrollable tears; he suffers terrifying dreams and waking shame; every bad thing he’s ever done plays on an unbidden loop in Shy’s mind and he responds with aggression and destruction that he neither understands or attempts to control. I was similarly affected (mentally and emotionally) by Max Porter’s Lanny, but while that novel was luscious and enthralling in its fabulous language, Shy is abrupt and confrontational; perfectly capturing the experience of being trapped inside the disturbed mind of a young fella who can’t control his thoughts, emotions, or actions. Captivated, and disquieted, throughout. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final form.)
I said to him, there’ll be rapists, violent offenders, not murderers I don’t think, but some very disturbed young men, and he stood up, came round the table and said, Mum, I’m a very disturbed young man, and I said, No poppet, you’re lost, that’s different, and he said, Mum, listen to me, I know you love me, but it’s not different. I’m not lost. I’m right where I got myself, and I said Oh, darling, no, and he said, Mum, shh. Whatever. A new school. My last chance. I’m going to take it.
Shy’s brain pings around through disjointed thoughts and scenarios as he makes his way across the grounds of the Last Chance school; pinging from his earliest to his latest memories; pinging from first person, to third person, to transcribing a documentary made about the program at his school. We learn about Shy’s long-suffering mother and stepfather (who seem to have tried everything to help their son, not understanding what might have hurt him along the way); we learn about his cousin Shaun introducing him to “jungle music” and drugs; we learn that Shy has had friends and a girlfriend and is capable of academic success, but he just can’t help blowing up the good things in his life. The Last Chance school seems to be staffed by extraordinarily caring and capable teacher-councillors, but despite their efforts to share calming techniques and forge understanding between the boys with group therapy sessions, every small slight drives Shy to respond with his default rage. Weary of his own violence, plagued by nightmares and shame, Shy struggles under the weight of his flint-stuffed backpack as he heads through the fields for the nearby pond.
His thoughts are lopping along in odd repetitive chunks, running at him, stumbling. Feels brave, feels pathetic, feels nothing. Panic. Calm. Mad clatter in the roof of the break like machine guns then swirling calm, home, school, years ago, yesterday, his mind all tight, then slackening, then something buzzing under like a tectonic plate, then marching, then pure noise, then snapping traps, then humming, bassline in his migraine, under the bathwater private time, then a dancey synth part in the clear sleepless noise of his insomnia, piano choon, one step forward two step backward, building a real thing, into the movement, which is like, oops, slippery on the leaves here, haha nearly went down.
The jumbled storytelling can be hard to follow, and the violence and mental illness don’t make for a “nice” story, but it feels like Porter has captured something true and worth considering from the inside of a disturbed mind. Shy might not be likeable or relatable, but he’s a broken teenager and it’s provoking to be asked to care about him and his fate. I was correspondingly provoked and captivated; I couldn’t ask for more from a novel of triple the length.
