Shy (2023)

Why this one?

A beer can told me to.

Beyond that rather clever bit of marketing, this immediately appealed as a new one by an author I’d seen talked about a lot but never got around to reading. Max Porter (1981- ; active 2014- ) was born in High Wycombe, England and studied History of Art at the Courtauld Institute in London. Prior to writing professionally, he managed the Chelsea branch of Daunt Books and was Editorial Director at Granta until 2019. His first novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015) won the International Dylan Thomas Prize and won or was shortlisted for numerous other awards. It was adapted for the stage, directed by Enda Walsh and starring Cillian Murphy. This was followed by the Booker-longlisted Lanny (2019), and the genre-blending The Death of Francis Bacon (2021). He’s also collaborated in various ways with musicians, including Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Jon Hopkins.

Thoughts, etc.

Shy is a short novel, with experimental and poetic flourishes, focusing on the inner life of the titular adolescent Shy. We find him, in 1995, in the appropriately named ‘Last Chance’ school, an institution offering an unconventional home for troubled teenagers with a history of delinquent behaviour. At the start of the book he’s setting off with a bag weighed down with rocks, heading for the school’s pond in the middle of the night, with an obvious intention in mind. We explore his mindset through both present tense interior monologue, flashback, and snippets of commentary from other sources - a therapist’s words, the narration of a documentary being made about Last Chance, the taunts of his classmates, and the lyrics of contemporary Drum’n’Bass tracks - his one true passion.

It’s a brisk and energetic read, albeit one which didn’t leave me fully satisfied. There’s a real virtuosity about the writing, which brings to mind the intense beats of Shy’s chosen music and the rising heartbeat of anxiety. Despite the poetic sensibility, it’s always accessible and, while there’s little in the way of traditional plot, the narrative is engaging enough to keep you page-turning at pace. Shy as a character is painfully believable, his monologue a rather sad howl of frustration at a world that he just can’t seem to get to grips with. His few demonstrable passions (for DnB, and in flashback, a brief interest in musical theatre) are shown being mocked by those around him; his potential escape routes from his inner turmoil dismissed. With little else to grab onto (his family are hardly a tangible presence in the story) he lashes out at everything around him, often violently and with half-intentional self-destructive consequences.

The somewhat impressionistic bulk of the novel gives way to an even stranger conclusion. His attempt at genuine self-destruction is exposed as almost comically poorly thought-through, and leads to a vividly described encounter with nature that’s at once rather grotesquely real and oddly dreamlike. The whole sequence is genuinely captivating but I found myself struggling to grasp its significance. The same went for an incongruously upbeat final few pages, in which Shy’s destructive instincts become a kind of celebratory group activity.

I left this short read a little unsure of what to make of it. While the conclusion hints at certain alternate paths for Shy, it ultimately feels deliberately opaque and open-ended. I generally don’t mind this - it’s nice to be left with something chew on. But here I wasn’t sure if there was meant to be hope or, more likely it seemed, a kind of nihilism in which Shy achieves no real growth but instead just finds some sort of acceptance of his nature and fate.

Score

7.5

I’m glad I picked this one up, and enjoyed its language and general oddness. I’d definitely be keen to check out more of Porter’s work, even if this one left me only partly satisfied.

Next up

Back to the Women’s Prize winners, with Ali Smith’s 2015 winner, How to Be Both.