BOOKED SOLID: Mystery and sex on the Broadway express
By Lucy Randall, The Dartmouth Senior Staff
Published on Thursday, April 30, 2009
"Lowboy" follows Will, a schizophrenic teenage boy who is trying to save the world.
If you've frequented the New York City subway system, chances are you may have met some interesting fellow riders. It's unlikely, however, that you've met anyone like Will Heller, the main character in John Wray's latest release, "Lowboy" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2009). In his third novel, Wray leads us through the city's famed subway system in pursuit of Will, a schizophrenic teenage boy who has escaped Bella Vista psychiatric clinic on a mission to save the world.
Perhaps as a publicity stunt, perhaps as an attempt to fully immerse himself in his material, Wray set out to write as much of his third novel as he could while riding the New York City subway.
Will, who has a similar interest in underground transportation (he gets his nickname, Lowboy, in part because of his "affection" for the subway), is perhaps even more obsessed with global warming -- he believes that the world will self-destruct by midnight on November 11 if he does not sacrifice himself to bring down the Earth's temperature. In an encrypted letter to his mother, Will explains that he wants to "open" himself.
"I think that might help as the world is inside of me and that will/might help to cool the world," Will writes.
Will's mother, joined by investigator Ali Lateef, is hot on the trail of her escaped son, and has learned of several sightings of Will since his escape. Wray builds suspense throughout the pair's chase, shifting the focus from Will's flight to the journey of his pursuers.
Judging from Will's paranoid, violent thoughts, and the suspense surrounding his efforts to follow his "calling," Wray's reader is likely to arrive at the conclusion that Will has devised some horrific crime to prevent the apocalypse.
As it turns out, however, Will is largely an ordinary boy: He just wants to lose his virginity.
Will makes his ill-fated first attempt with a homeless crackhead, huddled in the underground nook beneath a sidewalk grate. He then seeks out his ex-girlfriend, Emily, hoping things will go more smoothly this time than they did in the past. Theirs is hardly a conventional teenage romance. Will hasn't seen Emily since he pushed her in front of an oncoming subway.
Although she has a restraining order against Will, Emily still harbors a twisted, possessive and almost maternal love for her younger boyfriend. After he finds her at school on lunch break, Will takes Emily away with him, all the while dreaming up the best place for them to "save the world" together. Although this goes awry, Will forges on.
As his story approaches resolution, the drama shifts to Will's mother and Lateef, and ends with a "Law and Order"-esque plot twist -- that there is a "surprise" finish is, of course, no surprise. While the passages outlining Will's tormented stream of consciousness are unusual and innovative in their imagery, the story eventually takes an unfortunate turn towards the cliche.
Although I'm sure it would have been tricky for Wray to focus exclusively on Will's disjointed thoughts over the course of an entire novel, I wish he could have stayed within the mind of the subway-obsessed teenager for the book's full ride, rather than bringing the narrative above ground into the rational world.
Things up here are far less interesting.