When we meet Shy, the antihero of Max Porter’s novella, it is the middle of the night and he is creeping out of a school for delinquent youths and heading towards a lake carrying a rucksack ominously filled with rocks. A teenager with a violent temper and a passion for drum’n’bass, Shy’s hellraising has left his mother broken-hearted, his stepfather baffled, and prompted a succession of schools to expel him. Now he is marooned at the aptly named Last Chance, a crumbling institution “in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere” which we learn is the subject of a documentary film. Tiptoeing out of his dorm room, Shy reflects on how he has “sprayed, snorted, smoked, sworn, stolen, cut, punched, run, jumped, crashed an Escort, smashed up a shop, trashed a house, broken a nose, stabbed his stepdad’s finger, but it’s been a while since he’s crept. Stressful work.”
Porter’s book takes the listener on a tour around Shy’s mind, where memories of family altercations and a failed and humiliating attempt at sex with his girlfriend are interwoven with snapshots of therapy sessions, the voiceover of the Last Chance documentary and his mother pleading with him to think about his future.
Narrator Joe Gaminara makes light work of the multiple linguistic styles – Shy fitfully adopts the vernacular of a jungle MC (“Yup yup yup up in the town, up in the town, dance right now and move around”) – and of Porter’s impressionistic writing which straddles prose fiction and verse. It’s a fitting reflection of our protagonist’s intense inner turmoil, which looks to be reaching a peak as he makes his nocturnal exit.
Available via Faber Audio, 2hr 17min
Further listening
We Should All Be Feminists
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, HarperCollins, 45min
The Americanah author reads her bracingly powerful essay in which she envisions a new form of feminism rooted in inclusion and mutual respect.
Mad Honey
Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boyland, Hodder & Stoughton, 15hr 12min
This poignant tale of a woman fleeing an abusive relationship and returning to her home town to take over her parents’ beekeeping business is narrated by Carrie Coon and Key Taw.
