SelfPortrait with Boy, Rachel Lyon
SelfPortrait with Boy, Rachel Lyon
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

Self-Portrait with Boy

Author: Rachel Lyon

Narrator: Julia Whelan

Unabridged: 9 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/06/2018


Synopsis

Soon to be made into a major motion picture—Self Portrait—starring Zoë Kravitz and Thomasin McKenzie

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a "rich and thorny page turner" (Los Angeles Times) literary psychological horror about an ambitious young artist whose accidental photograph of a tragedy could jumpstart her career, but devastate her most intimate friendship.

Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet. Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that her crumbling loft apartment is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. One day, in the background of a self-portrait, Lu accidentally captures an image of a boy falling to his death. The photograph turns out to be startlingly gorgeous, the best work of art she’s ever made. It’s an image that could change her life…if she lets it.

But the decision to show the photograph is not easy. The boy is her neighbors’ son, and the tragedy brings all the building’s residents together. It especially unites Lu with the boy’s beautiful grieving mother, Kate. As the two forge an intense bond based on sympathy, loneliness, and budding attraction, Lu feels increasingly unsettled and guilty, torn between equally fierce desires: to advance her career, and to protect a woman she has come to love.

Set in early 90s Brooklyn on the brink of gentrification, Self-Portrait with Boy is a “sparkling debut” (The New York Times Book Review) about the emotional dues that must be paid on the road to success and a powerful exploration of the complex terrain of female friendship. “The conflict is rich and thorny, raising questions about art and morality, love and betrayal, sacrifice and opportunism, and the chance moments that can define a life…It wrestles with the nature of art, but moves with the speed of a page-turner” (Los Angeles Times).

About Rachel Lyon

Rachel Lyon is the author of Self-Portrait with a Boy, a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s 2018 First Novel Prize, and Fruit of the Dead, an Oprah Daily best book of 2024 which the New York Times called “superb” and “refreshing.” Rachel’s short stories have appeared in One Story, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and other publications. She has taught most recently at Bennington College and the American University of Paris, where she was the 2024 Paris Writer in Residence. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she lives with her family in Western Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader on February 08, 2018

4 original and artsy stars to Self-Portrait with Boy! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ I requested this book thanks to my GR friend, Fran. Thank you, Fran! Rachel Lyon has a unique voice and style, and this book’s premise was completely original. Lu was a photographer working three jobs to make ends meet. She lived in a......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on January 21, 2018

I was blown away by this book. Self-Portrait with Boy is a ruthless examination of the cost of success for a young hopeful photographer. Lu Rile is in her late 20s, squatting in an Artists in Residence abandoned-warehouse-turned-apartment in Brooklyn which is so run down it should be condemned, worki......more

Goodreads review by luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) on August 27, 2021

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “Tragedy is insignificant, banal. A falling boy goes largely unnoticed.” Self-Portrait with Boy is an electrifying debut novel. Within its pages, Rachel Lyon’s paints an unsettling portrait, that of the artist as a young woman, one whose raw hunger for artistic recogn......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on February 02, 2018

Art is rooted in experience, and artists plumb their lives for their art. I think of F. Scott Fitzgerald and how he appropriated Zelda's letters and diaries and story for his work, or Thomas Wolfe whose first novel Look Homeward, Angel caused a ruckus in his hometown that was so thinly veiled in the......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on June 04, 2019

Lu Rile, a photography artist, who begins the novel saying “it” started as a simple, tragic accident, narrates “Self Portrait With Boy”. The “it” is an event involving a photograph, one that captured a neighbor boy falling from the roof of her building at the same time Lu is taking a self portrait.......more