John Wray has been extravagantly praised for his third novel, “Lowboy” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and you only have to read a few pages to see why — it’s a gripping, funny, and original variation on the urban coming-of-age novel that follows a 16-year-old schizophrenic on a “Warriors”-style journey through the New York City subway system.
Will Heller stops taking his medication and flees the facility in which he is a patient to go off on an odyssey through the underground world that fascinates him.
Wray puts us in the teen’s head as his psychological disorder escalates and he begins to believe he holds the fate of the entire world in his hands.
The book dramatizes the early stages of the development of one of those sad, deranged souls to be seen wandering the tunnels and streets of Manhattan.
Will is still very young and strikingly good-looking during the “Lowboy” adventure — he draws the sexual attention of more than one woman — but we can imagine what his life might be like 10 or 20 years down the road.
Wray juggles a love for New York and its underworld with a keen awareness of the dangers that can be found off the beaten path, particularly if you are in no position to defend yourself.
Will’s hyper-awareness of the excitement of city life comes through on almost every page — even when he is in the midst of imminent danger:
“The city was newlooking, glistening in the daylight, an onion with its outer skin sloughed off. He saw dimes in the pavement and vinecovered housefronts and old useless flagpoles and shopping bags hanging like vampire bats from the trees. He saw awnings and bellpulls and limos and dogs dressed in parkas. There were so many things to see that he got dizzy. Babies see the world this way, he thought. Then they forget.”
Wray crosscuts between Will and his frantic and strangely disoriented mother, Violet, as she and a cop who specializes in missing persons try to find the boy.
The policeman, Ali Lateef, is a wonderfully unstereotypical detective who often gives the book the air of a literary thriller.
The subway is the real star of “Lowboy,” however, including a wondrous setpiece in the long-abandoned City Hall station.
It isn’t surprising to learn that Wray decided to try to write as much of the novel as he could on long underground rides through a city that clearly bewitches him as much as it does Will.
