Lowboy, John Wray
Lowboy, John Wray
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Lowboy

Author: John Wray

Narrator: Richard Powers

Unabridged: 10 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/03/2009

Synopsis

Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-year-old paranoid schizophrenic, gets on a New York City uptown B train on a fantastic and terrifying quest to save the world. Violet Heller, his frantic mother, is joined by Ali Lateef, a missing-persons specialist, in a desperate attempt to locate her son before psychosis claims him completely. As the stakes grow higher, Lateef gradually comes to realize that this is more than a case of a runaway teen: Will Heller has a chilling case history, and Violet, beautiful and enigmatic, harbors a secret that Lateef will discover at his own peril.Suspenseful and comic, devastating and hopeful by turns, Lowboy is a fearless exploration of youth, sex, and violence in contemporary America, seen through one boy's haunting and extraordinary vision.

About John Wray

John Wray is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Right Hand of Sleep and Canaan’s Tongue. He was named one of Grantamagazine’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. The recipient of a Whiting Award, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kim on November 17, 2009

Let me preface this review with this; I am in a rut. A literary rut, a professional rut, a metaphysical rut, a rut rut. Damn, I love the onomatopoeia that goes with that word… try it: grind your teeth together and spit the word out, let your tongue hit the back of your teeth with a little *pfft*. Ye......more

Goodreads review by Don on March 07, 2009

(FROM MY BLOG): Walk along a street in downtown Seattle. You see them everywhere. Wild-eyed men and women. Dirty, dishevelled, mumbling to themselves or yelling at the universe. Crazy people, more like scary forces of nature than human beings. Beings we nervously evade as we see them approach. Except......more

Goodreads review by Jeff on March 29, 2009

I don't know what to say! This novel is truly a tour de force, a tense and suspenseful day in the life of a beautifully blonde, sixteen-year-old boy who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. I know the comparison is cliche, but imagine a Holden Caulfield-like figure off his meds having escaped the me......more

Goodreads review by Mark on May 11, 2012

The immortal poet Chastity (in 10 Things I Hate about You) once said, "I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?" I did not think so, until now. Lowboy is a short, meandering book about Will Heller, a paranoid schizophrenic wandering around New Yor......more

Goodreads review by christa on March 26, 2009

There is this moment in John Wray's "Lowboy" where a character says to the schizophrenic hero: "Listen to me, Heller. You're beautiful and you make me laugh and I want you to take me to that place that we just saw, but you need to stop saying things like that. They creep me out, okay? And you're not......more

Quotes

“Narrator Paul Michael Garcia sounds involved from the very beginning of this story and never allows even the slightest moment of it to slip away from him. As the troubled youth, Will, Garcia delivers a transcendent performance that will be deeply affecting to listeners…Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“A breathtaking journey through the subway tunnels of Manhattan and the subterranean fantasies of a schizophrenic teen…[and] the twists and turns of the human psyche.” O, The Oprah Magazine

“Wray’s third novel, Lowboy, is uncompromising, often gripping and generally excellent…Wray deftly takes readers in and out of the psyche of what they will learn is a paranoid schizophrenic teenager…One of the novel’s many pleasures is just going along: putting yourself fully in the hands of the story and its author…This is a meticulously constructed novel, immensely satisfying in the perfect, precise beat of its plot.” New York Times Book Review

“Wray’s captivating third novel drifts between psychological realities while exploring the narrative poetics of schizophrenia…Wray deploys brilliant hallucinatory visuals, including chilling descriptions of the subway system and an imaginary river flowing beneath Manhattan. In his previous works, Wray has shown that he’s not a stranger to dark themes, and with this tightly wound novel, he reaches new heights.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“What’s most seductive for me about John Wray’s third novel—and arguably the one that puts him squarely on the map alongside contemporary luminaries like Joseph O'Neill, Jonathan Lethem, and Junot Diaz—is how skillfully it explores the mind’s mysterious terrain…Wray invokes all the classic elements of a mystery in the telling, and that’s what makes this novel such a searing read…This kind of pacing is the stuff we crave—the kind that draws you in so unawares that before you know it, it’s past midnight and you’re down to the last page.” Amazon.com

Awards

  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • Oprah Irresistible Read
  • San Francisco Chronicle Best Book
  • Amazon Best Book of the Month
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