Shy (novella)

Last updated

Shy
Author Max Porter
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Faber and Faber
Publication date
2023
Pages128
ISBN 9780571377305
Preceded by The Death of Francis Bacon  

Shy is a novella by Max Porter, published in 2023. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The book is named after its protagonist, a 16-year-old at a boarding school for troubled boys, in England in 1995. [6] [7] The story takes place over the course of a few hours one night. "The book's true setting, however, is the sprawling, shifting terrain of Shy's mind." [8] According to Kevin Power, writing in The Guardian, "it is interested in questions of childhood and maturity, cruelty and compassion, art and despair". [9] Shy mixes prose and poetry. Stylistically, there is unusual typography. [7] [10] Similar to Porter's other works, the writing itself is experimental, reflecting the subject's chaotic mind. [10] [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeanette Winterson</span> English writer

Jeanette Winterson is an English author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zadie Smith</span> British novelist, essayist, and short-story writer

Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruskin Bond</span> Indian author of British origin

Ruskin Bond is an Indian author. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, was published in 1956, and it received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. Bond has authored more than 500 short stories, essays, and novels which includes 69 books for children. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2014. He lives with his adopted family in Landour, Mussoorie, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lionel Shriver</span> American author (born 1957)

Lionel Shriver is an American author and journalist who lives in the United Kingdom. Her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rupert Thomson</span> English writer

Rupert Thomson, FRSL is an English writer. He is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels and an award-winning memoir. He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, New York, Sydney, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Rome. In 2010, after several years in Barcelona, he moved back to London. He has contributed to the Financial Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Granta and the Independent.

<i>The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas</i> 2006 novel by John Boyne

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is a 2006 historical novel by Irish novelist John Boyne. The plot concerns a German boy named Bruno whose father is the commandant of Auschwitz and Bruno's friendship with a Jewish detainee named Shmuel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colum McCann</span> Irish author (born 1965)

Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in New York. He is the co-founder and President of Narrative 4, an international empathy education nonprofit. He is also a Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence at Hunter College, New York. He is known as an international writer who believes in the "democracy of storytelling." Among his numerous honors are the U.S National Book Award, the Dublin Literary Prize, several major European awards, and an Oscar nomination.

Richard Milward is an English novelist. His debut novel Apples was published by Faber in 2007. He has also written Ten Storey Love Song,Kimberly's Capital Punishment, and Man-Eating Typewriter. Raised in Guisborough, Redcar and Cleveland, he attended Laurence Jackson School and Prior Pursglove College, then studied fine art at Byam Shaw School of Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. He cites Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh as the book that made him want to write and Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan and Hunter S. Thompson as influences. He joined fellow Teessider Michael Smith in writing a column for Dazed & Confused magazine.

Kevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of three collections of short stories and three novels. City of Bohane was the winner of the 2013 International Dublin Literary Award. Beatlebone won the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize and is one of seven books by Irish authors nominated for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award, the world's most valuable annual literary fiction prize for books published in English. His 2019 novel Night Boat to Tangier was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. Barry is also an editor of Winter Papers, an arts and culture annual.

Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madeline Miller</span> American writer (born 1978)

Madeline Miller is an American novelist, author of The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018). Miller spent ten years writing The Song of Achilles while she worked as a teacher of Latin and Greek. The novel tells the story of the love between the mythological figures Achilles and Patroclus; it won the Orange Prize for Fiction, making Miller the fourth debut novelist to win the prize. She is a 2019 recipient of the Alex Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yaa Gyasi</span> Ghanaian-American novelist

Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian-American novelist. Her debut novel Homegoing, published in 2016, won her, at the age of 26, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first book of fiction, the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" honors for 2016 and the American Book Award. She was awarded a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ayobami Adebayo</span> Nigerian writer (born 1988)

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a Nigerian writer. Her 2017 debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sally Rooney</span> Irish author

Sally Rooney is an Irish author and screenwriter. She has published three novels: Conversations with Friends (2017), Normal People (2018), and Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021). The first two were adapted into the television miniseries Normal People (2020) and Conversations with Friends (2022).

Max Porter is an English writer, formerly a bookseller and editor, best known for his debut novel Grief is the Thing with Feathers.

<i>Night Boat to Tangier</i> 2019 novel by Kevin Barry

Night Boat to Tangier is a 2019 novel by Kevin Barry. It is his third novel and was published on 20 June 2019 by the Edinburgh-based publisher Canongate Books.

<i>Last Night at the Lobster</i>

Last Night at the Lobster is a novella by American writer Stewart O'Nan, published in 2007.

Lanny is the second novel by Max Porter, published in March 2019. It is a missing-boy story, set in an English village within commuting distance of London. The book was described by Tim Smith-Laing in The Telegraph as being "between novella, long poem, and grief memoir", and by John Boyne in The Irish Times as "experimental fiction". It is named after the missing boy.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers is the debut book by Max Porter, a novella about grief, published in 2015.

The Death of Francis Bacon is a novella by Max Porter about Francis Bacon, published in 2021. It is a reimagining of Bacon's deathbed thoughts, in his final six days in April 1992, in a Madrid hospital, alone except for a hospice nun.

References

  1. Sacks, Sam (19 May 2023). "Fiction: 'Shy' by Max Porter". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  2. "Shy by Max Porter: This is a perfect book". The Irish Times. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  3. "In Max Porter's new novel, a troubled, self-destructive young man heads out to the lake". TLS. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  4. Kennard, Luke (18 March 2023). "Max Porter's Shy opens an extraordinary window into a troubled boy's mind". The Telegraph. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  5. Lowdon, Claire (7 November 2023). "Shy by Max Porter review: he's as weird as ever". The Times. ISSN   0140-0460 . Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  6. Waldman, Katy (6 May 2023). "Max Porter's Novel of Troubled and Enchanted Youth". The New Yorker. ISSN   0028-792X . Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  7. 1 2 Barekat, Houman (7 April 2023). "Shy by Max Porter — a paean to misunderstood youth". Financial Times. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  8. Hoby, Hermione (2 May 2023). "A Novel Depicts One Disordered Night in the Life of a Teenager". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  9. Power, Kevin (5 April 2023). "Shy by Max Porter review – lyrical study of troubled youth". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  10. 1 2 Presser, Bram (7 April 2023). "Exciting and radical, this story of a troubled teen explodes on the page". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 7 November 2023.
  11. "A Bewildering World: On Max Porter's "Shy"". Los Angeles Review of Books. 27 May 2023. Retrieved 7 November 2023.