This book definitely made me think. The main character stuck with a difficult choice to do what's right for her career, or to respect her neighbor and their privacy by not publishing a photograph of a nine-year-old boy falling to his death. I enjoyed the New York setting, and was surprised by the ending.

3.5 stars

So this book was different from any I’ve read before. It was a bit depressing and sad, but ultimately I did like it. The whole book revolves around a self-portrait that Lu takes of herself. But she accidentally enraptured the death of her neighbors child while taking the photo. So we follow her as she tries to get the photo publicly displayed. But throughout this process she forms a close relationship with the dead child’s mother. So morally we watch whether she makes the right or wrong decision and how that affects her life.

I would recommend Self-Portrait With Boy, but just know that it is a bit on the sad side. Which ultimately doesn’t change my opinion of the book.

As any author would tell you, writing a book is difficult business. For Rachel Lyon, her debut novel, Self-Portrait with Boy, was approximately five years in the making. Lyon has had several short stories published, but tackling a full-fledged novel about a young artist who finds herself having to make a difficult choice proved to be a very different process altogether.

How is writing a novel different from writing short stories?

It’s very different. I tend to write short stories fairly quickly, within a few days. Usually if I’m spending more time (on a short story) than a few days, then it’s not really working. But this novel took a long time, and it was a very different process. I started in drafts, not really sure who the narrator was going to be, if it would be multiple narrators, what the main thrust of the plot was going to be. There was a lot of experimenting that went into it in the early stages. It took years to come up with my first draft, and then after that first one, I ended up scrapping the whole manuscript and starting again. It was a fun process and there was a lot of joy in the method of it. Sitting down every morning and just knowing what the next scene would be. I felt then that I could basically see the light at the end of the tunnel — although it was pretty faint sometimes.

What authors inspire you?

That question is a bit difficult to answer because I’m a very broad reader. I like poetry, essays, nonfiction, and everything really. I tend to be sort of a “project-based reader,” in the sense that, for example, when I was working on [this novel], I read a few books that had been written in the 90s, like I Love Dick by Chris Kraus. I looked at books that were popular around the time that my novel was set to give it historical context, and I read some New York history, which was really fun.

How long has this novel been in the works?

I started it in earnest around 2014, I think. I went to a writing residency after graduate school and it was then when I first started researching the East River and the ghost stories that surrounded it, as well as the history of DUMBO (short for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). So perhaps it was closer to 2012 when I started.

Lu, the main character in Self-Portrait with Boy, is faced with a very tough choice: friendship vs. her career. Do you think the choice she ultimately makes affects how she sees herself as a person?

Obviously, it’s quite destructive. One of the characters in the book says to her, “She had to do what she did to begin to become herself.” I don’t think about that so fatalistically and I don’t think anyone actually has to do anything (good or bad) to be who they need to be. There are infinite ways of growing and changing. But what she does has its effect on her, and I think she becomes more sensitive to other people and more aware of her power over other people and of her own agency as a consequence. And she learns that she has the capacity to love people in a way that she didn’t know how in the beginning of the novel.

You portray a sort of artist commune in a rundown, derelict building in Brooklyn. How did those characters come about?

I was thinking about the artists that I grew up around as a child, thinking about artist friends of mine. It was fun to think of art as an expression of character, but a lot of the characters in the book came from the art that I imagined them making. The building itself is a facilitator, a setting, a problem. It’s an obstacle in the plot but it’s also a vehicle.

Which character presented the greatest challenge?

Lu, definitely, because she’s very different from me. Many of the other characters I felt like I could picture them in my mind, or that I could sympathize with them, or both. I had a visual of Lu, but I didn’t quite understand her motivations and personality for years during the writing process. My first manuscript was in the third person and it wasn’t until I started writing in the first person from her point of view that she finally clicked for me.

What future projects are you working on?

I’m working on a novel about a young woman just out of college who goes to work for an older, more successful male writer, the power dynamics of the relationship, and how that evolves in the course of the book. She becomes his nanny, and he’s a bit of an alcoholic. [Laughs.] But it’s fun because it’s told in the third person and it takes place in the present. I think about it a little bit as my #MeToo novel.

This is not only a fantastically written story, it deals with an incredibly difficult choice that the main character has to make. Her job is to create art. But what if that art is created from tragedy, and its success would be painful for someone she cares about? I feel like this may have been inspired by the picture of the falling man on 9/11. If the photographer knew that man's family, would they still have published it? Does the man's anonymity make it right? It's not an easy question, and the author doesn't treat it as such. The book is beautiful, tragic, and one I'll most likely read again.

I do have to knock off one star for the lack of quotation marks in dialogue. There is absolutely no reason for doing this, and I have no idea why publishers allow it. It's the same as if I eliminated all punctuation from this review and said, "It's a STYLE CHOICE!!" Dialogue marks are signposts for the reader, and taking them out is like knocking down every street sign before driving in an unfamiliar town.

The basic premise is good and the story's main conflict will resonate with readers.

thought-provoking and emotional, the ending is not one you would expect. Not for everyone, but a good read none-the-less

"The very act of recall is like trying to photograph the sky. The infinite and ever-shifting colors of memory, its rippling light, cannot really be captured. Show someone who has never seen the sky a picture of the sky and you show them a picture of nothing."

Rachel Lyon’s Self-Portrait with Boy was an unexpected read. It’s not a book that I would normally pick up, but after reading several praising reviews, I decided to give it a try.

I’m so glad I did because this is the kind of book that sticks with you.

It tells the story of Lu Rile, a young photographer in 1990s New York, who is both highly ambitious yet still an unknown. When she accidentally captures a young boy falling to his death in the background of her latest self-portrait - Self-Portrait #400 - she is startled to discover that it is her best work to date, a self-proclaimed “masterpiece.” This is the portrait that will put her on the map in the art world, but doing so could be detrimental to her growing friendship with the boy’s mother, Kate, who lives upstairs. Lu questions what she is willing to do for success as she struggles with whether or not to show Kate the photo.

Lu Rile is such a complex and, at times, unlikeable character. At one point, her father bought her a coffee-table art book for Christmas because it made him think of her. Lu, instead of being grateful for the gesture, essentially criticized her father for the book because it wasn’t “real” art; instead, it was the art that made you feel “numb” versus her art, which made you feel “unsettled.”

You want to feel sympathy for Lu – after all, she was working hard but reaping no rewards, she was young and naïve and didn’t really have a lot of experience – but at the same time realize how ruthless she really was. She knew the potential her actions had of causing pain, yet she did them anyway. She put the value of success over that of friendship. And yet, the story has this way of sucking me in. I wanted to cringe when reading about Lu, and even though the first chapter made it clear about the progression of events, it was like a bad train wreck that I couldn’t look away from.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for an advanced copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest review.

<b>4 original and artsy stars to Self-Portrait with Boy!</b> ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

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 rat-infested apartment in Brooklyn in the late 1980s. Her project at the time of the book’s opening was taking a self-portrait every day. It turned out that one of her photos had the image of her neighbors’ child falling to his death, which was captured in a supposedly beautiful way. What will Lu do? Launch her career with this gorgeously captivating photo? Or risk losing new relationships she’s formed as a result?

There were two small flaws for me - one was the dialogue style. Without the use of quotation marks and names to denote who was speaking, it was sometimes hard to follow, and the flow wasn’t always there. Second, there was an incident where animals were harmed...Some view these particular animals as a nuisance (rats), but I don’t know how that added to the story? And I really wish I could unsee the visual I got from that horrific scene.

Overall, this book was engaging and well-written. I especially loved the art/photography angle. I will definitely be looking for what Rachel Lyon writes next!

Happy Publication Week to Self-Portrait with Boy!

Thank you to Rachel Lyon, Scribner, and Netgalley for the complimentary copy.

Lu Rile is a struggling photographer. She lives in a crumbling warehouse. Her current project is a self-portrait every day. One day, Lu takes her photo, leaping forward so the camera will capture her in flight. At the exact moment, something else is falling... The neighbor's only child has fallen off the building roof.

Lu develops her film and in a twist of fate, the falling child was captured with Lu.

This is a hard book, raising difficult questions about grief, success and mortality. This is a special sort of story and a special sort of book. Rachel Lyon has a true talent at capturing the difficult moments.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

There is a lot to love about this novel - and a few things that make it a hard sell. It's a compulsive read - you want to know where it's going and you want to get there fast - but not a whole lot actually happens. It opens with the death of a child (always hard) and then some ambiguous moral decision. I'd compare her to Claire Messud. I think people will love this, but not all people will read it.

An impressive debut which richly deserves the kudos it has received. Lu Rile is an artist living in a warehouse in Dumbo in 1991. Lyon has captured the time and the location wonderfully. I can visualize not only the loft but also the supermarket where she works (and her boss!). She's committed to one photographic self portrait a day. On day 400, a freak accident where a neighbor child falls from the roof leads to a photo that is her masterpiece- except there's a problem. This novel is not only about the art scene and a struggling artist but also about the grief and guilt in the aftermath of the fall. Each character is so beautifully drawn and realistic. You'll feel their pain and equally Lu's ambition. How can she profit from a photo that will just destroy her friend Kate? How can she tell Kate that her masterpiece includes Kate's son falling to his death? Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. This is literary page turner with a protagonist who has a distinct voice. Two thumbs up!

Rachel Lyon has written a debut novel with nuance and depth. In “Self-Portrait With Boy”, Lu Rile is a struggling photographer living in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) Brooklyn. This is not the hot, hot, hot 2018 DUMBO where 1 bedrooms rent for $5,000/month and sell for a million. No, this is a pre-gentrification squat in a derelict building where the owner disappears and the rodents are free to play, where it is hot in the summer and cold in the winter.

Lu has talent, but it’s hard to break through. She is working on a self-portrait series while working for a creep at the local grocery store, a scary 24-hour print store, and as a substitute art teacher at a private school for rich kids run by a pretty odd duck.

None of it generates enough income to pay the rent, much less for supplies. That’s not to mention helping to pay the lawyer that is supposedly working to prevent the building from being sold out from under the long-time artist residents, nor the surgery necessary to save her father’s sight.

But one day Lu takes a photo that she knows is a masterpiece. Her challenge is to convince a gallery owner to take a chance on an unknown quantity. Told with insight and wisdom, “Self-Portrait With Boy” is full of art, magic, pain, and love. It’s a beautiful story that may stay with you for a long time.

Thank you Scribner and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader’s Copy.

Talk about a moral and ethical dilemma. Lu really has to do a lot of soul searching and take some hits in this tragic yet brilliant novel. I could not put this down once I started it. The scenes are wonderfully vivid and the characters well developed. This will be on my To-Be-Read-Again list for sure.

Recently, I watched Griffin Dunne's documentary, The Center Will Not Hold, about his aunt, Joan Didion. Dunne was questioning Didion about her writing in Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I was taken back when Didion recalled a moment in Haight-Ashbury in 1967 when she came across a child whose mother had given her LSD. Didion explained that she wanted to run and call the police, go home to her child and protect her. Instead, she smiled and said, “Let me tell you, it was gold,” she says. “You live for moments like that if you’re doing a piece. Good or bad.” I have thought about that revealing statement quite a few times, and then I discovered Self Portrait With Boy. The situation is similar. The story is fiction. It has the same impact. Is there a moral dilemma in both stories?

Lu Rile was a young photographer living in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) in the early nineties. It was still pioneering days for the Brooklyn gentrification movement. Artists lived in old warehouses or factories in large spaces for small amounts of rent. Lu was focused solely on her work, paying the rent at first with a job at a health food store. A solitary person, Lu didn't become part of the community of artists who lived at 222 River Street. Lu hadn't yet found her niche in the work she wanted to pursue. She began a series of self-portraits, one each day, nudes in motion in front of her large window. During a party, the son of the upstairs neighbor falls, and Lu's camera catches the boy's descending image in her shot. She doesn't realize it until later when she finally develops the film. The photo became "Self Portrait #400." Lu knows it is her best work. Lu also knows it will hurt the grieving parents, Kate and Steve, so she doesn't show it to them.

Life's realities get in the way of Lu's intense focus on her work. Her father needs cataract surgery, and she takes on two more jobs to help pay for the procedure. If she could make one big splash into the center of the art world, into a gallery exhibit, her life would be better. To do that, she must deal with the question of how far is she willing to go to achieve her goal. Lu knows her "Self Portrait #400" is her golden ticket. The book is riveting with descriptions of Lu's growing friendship with Kate, the grieving mother. Lu feels responsible for her father but shows a certain level of resentment for being left with him when her mother took off when she was a young child. The struggle is the operative motion in this provocative book. What does it take to be a successful artist, one who is recognized, who is asked to talk about her work? Lu must come to terms with what she wants to do. As a reader, I was challenged by this brilliantly told story. It is haunting me still.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the e-ARC of this novel to be published on February 6, 2018.

'Tragedy is insignifigant, banal.'

Is it? Lu Rile is hungry, to be something in the art world, to make her mark no matter what. Art is to be seen, be it disturbing or not. Is it her fault if the photo that could make her career happens to be another woman’s all consumning tragedy? When she accidentally captures a young boy falling to his death in a photograph of herself, she has to decide whether betrayal is a worthy price to pay in the name of art. By chance, the boy lives in the same riverside warehouse she does, a place that smells of rat poisoning and turpentine, the only place she can afford in New York. Working in a health food store where she is treated poorly is the only way she can work on her picture a day plan, but time is of the essence, she has to be taken seriously if she will ever make a name for herself. When she forms an intensely close bond with Kate, Max’s greiving mother, the photo and the boy begin to haunt her, wreaking havoc on her sanity. This is her future, the gold, the meat and yet her love for Kate causes pause. She knows if she moves forward to show the photograph, it will be the ruin of everything she has built. There is a choice, or is there? Kate’s husband Steve is an artist, surely they understand art above all else belongs to the world? It cannot be denied that the photo is beautiful in it’s horror. It’s amazing what we convince ourselves of when it comes to our own wants.

Kate has taken Lu Rile into her home and heart, confiding the intimate struggles of her marriage, sharing the abyss of grief for her beloved,late gifted son Max, not once imagining Lu Rile is keeping the secret of her son’s final moments from her. That back in her own crummy apartment is a devastating photograph of his fall. Lu struggles just to survive, working in a health food store, her father depends on her and needs an expensive surgery, she simply is not making enough to maintain their lives. Kate knows the right people, everything is falling into place, this is the chance Lu must take, finally an oppurtunity to push her art out there. Can’t this be a blessing that blossoms out of grief and tragedy? Lu would be insane not to take advantage of the chances her friendship with Kate affords her. How much of her love and compassion, her tenderness for the deeply wounded, broken Kate is selfless? Can’t she take care of Kate but also look out for her own needs too? Why is it so wrong?

Who is this Lu? “There are so many people I had not yet become.” It seems there are so many versions of ourselves that haunt us, so many different people within us begging to be born. Is hunger and a drive to be someone reason enough to betray? Are there moral grounds that should never be tramped upon, even for the sake of art? It’s stunning the lengths people go to to make something of themselves, and what works wonderfully in this novel is the internal tug of war Lu is having within herself to do what is right, for her or for Kate, whom she’s come to love. How a novel can break your heart one moment and make you furious the next is a wonder.

I devoured this novel, it was ugly and beautiful, much like everything going on inside of Lu. It made me spitting mad at times too.

Publication Date: February 6, 2018

Scribner

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 book. And I think of Elizabeth Strout's recent novel My Name is Lucy Barton whose character is told she must be ruthless in her art. Artists are faced with telling the truth or protecting others.

On the first page of Self Portrait With Boy, we are told the main character, Lu Rile, was described as "ruthless," single minded. Lu, looking back on what happened twenty years previous, talks about the trauma behind the work that catapulted her into the limelight and tells us her story.


The novel begins with Lu admitting that at age twenty-six "there were so many people I had not yet become." I loved that line because it reflects how I have seen my life since I was a teenager: life is a continual process of growth and change, so that we become different people as we age.

Lu is a squatter in an old factory inhabited by artists. She works several low paying jobs and barely scraps by. Lu feels like an outsider, a girl who grew up poor and does not understand the world of the well-off and well-known artists around her.

Because she can not afford anything else, Lu becomes her own model and every day takes a self portrait. One day, she sets the timer on her camera and jumps, naked, in front of the large windows in her unheated apartment. When she develops the film she discovers that in the background she has captured the fatal fall of a child.

The child's parents become alienated in their grief, the successful artist father moving out while the mother, Kate, leans on Lu for support. It has been years since Lu had been close to anyone. She is unable to tell Kate about the photograph.

There are weird occurrences that make Lu believe the boy is haunting her and she becomes desperate to get rid of the photograph. Lu's father is in need of money for surgery, and she is pressured to join the others in the building in hiring a lawyer. Lu knows her photo is an amazing work and she struggles between success or the love she feels for Kate and the admiration for Steve.

Rachel Lyon's writing is amazing. I loved how she used sights, sounds, and aromas to make Lu's world real. This is her debut novel.

Rachel Lyon brings us an excellent novel set in NYC - actually in DUMBO, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, from 1991 (pre-gentrification) into more modern times. Lu Rile has graduated art school and done some graduate work, but spends most of her time taking and developing arty photos, and working at a small health food store in nearby Brooklyn Heights for minimum wage. In 1991 NYC, that was $3.80 an hour. She would not be able to stay in NYC if she didn't live in the abandoned neighborhood at 222 River Street under the bridge overpass. If she returned home to live with her Dad on the Massachusetts coast, she would never be recognized or respected as a serious artist.

Part of her daily routine included taking a self-portrait, usually an action shot or one defining herself or her community. On the 400th day's self-portrait fate or kismet interferes, resulting in a perfectly balanced, absolutely compelling photo. It is the best photo she has ever taken. It may be the best photo she will ever take. Unfortunately what makes the photo balanced and perfect is the upstairs neighbor's nine year old child free-falling to his death outside Lu's window. Of course she doesn't see the photo until several days after the accident, days spent consoling Kate, getting to know her better, becoming friends. And once Lu sees the developed proof, she realizes she must make a choice between being true to her friendship with Kate and destroying the negative, or beginning her career as a professional photographer by showing the print in a serious gallery. Or maybe there are other choices?

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Rachel Lyon, and Scribner in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

Lu Rile, a dirt poor twenty-six year old photographer, lived in an abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn, New York. The landlord allowed artists to squat in his cheap, ill-repaired lofts. Gentrification would eventually force apartment dwellers to accept buy-outs. Barren streets with crumbling sidewalks and unheated living space would be replaced by exclusive residences. For now though, Lu lived in a fourth floor loft. She worked part-time in Summerland, an upscale health food store in Brooklyn Heights. The wealthy clientele treated her like a non-existent entity. Her subsistence diet consisted of food she pocketed from Summerland.

Lu, a struggling photographer, needed a platform for change. She embarked upon a photographic exercise in the study of technique; shadows and depth perception. Every day, she staged her self portrait then critiqued the photo. Self-Portrait #400 was unique. Against the backdrop of the loft's large pane window, a nude Lu leaped up in the air from the right while a blur from the left descended, followed by screams and sirens. An accidental masterpiece. A falling boy (Max Schubert-Fine falling to his death) while Lu leaped in the air. A perfect photo of flying and falling. The photo could be transformative. It could be a career starter, a way to reach a wider audience. A moral dilemma ensued, a question of right or wrong.

Upon the death of nine year old Max, neighbors from the apartments came together and developed close friendships while insulating and protecting grieving mother Kate Fine. Lu Rile, lonely and friendless, became a close confident, a new experience for Lu. Although haunted by images of Max, Lu was propelled forward but wanted to get Kate's blessing and permission to show the photo. How could she even think of approaching Kate?

"Self-Portrait with Boy: A Novel" by Rachel Lyon is a study in morality. The emotional toll, the guilt and stress created by the accidental photo of Max's demise and Lu's potential rise cannot be understated. Ms. Lyon has created a powerful commentary on a photographer's quest for recognition and success.

Thank you Scribner and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Self-Portrait with Boy: A Novel".

I was immediately drawn to the provocative premise of this book. It's the late 1980s. Young, struggling female NYC photographer Lu Rile lives in a former warehouse; a crumbling, illegal building of lofts. Lu's latest project has been taking a self-portrait each day. So far the results have not been extraordinary...until one fateful day. Lu sets up her camera and strips bare. At the appropriate moment, she leaps forward aside her wall of windows as the shutter releases, capturing her image in flight. Whilst Lu was airborne, she heard the sound of something tap against her window. Now there were more sounds. Lu would never, ever forget the animalistic howl of agony from Steve Schubert, the artist upstairs. Within seconds, Steve and his wife Kate were pounding down the hallway stairs. An unspeakable tragedy had just taken place. Steve and Kate's only child Max had fallen off the roof, fatally landing into an air vent. Days later when Lu develops the film, she makes a heart-stopping discovery: "Self-Portrait #400" captured beautiful blond-haired Max Schubert-Fine tumbling downward in her left window pane in perfect symmetry with Lu leaping across the right pane. As startling and horrific this is to discover, Lu can't deny the reality that this is her long-awaited masterpiece.

Lu works three jobs simultaneously while pursuing the dream to have her photographs shown in a prestigious art gallery. She even steals food from the health food store she works at to survive financially. So, "Self-Portrait #400" is like a ticking time bomb as Lu deals with its implications. Although she never interacted with the Schubert-Fines prior to the tragedy occurring, Lu has now become quite close with Kate. How can Lu bring herself to tell Kate about the picture and ask for permission to have it shown as an art piece? This is the major conflict in the book.

The author chose an unorthodox method of conveying the conversations between people. She used absolutely no quotations around the dialogue, nor identified by name the person who spoke each line (example: said Kate). You are just supposed to discern the narrators once the stage is set with the characters. At first it looked clean, simple and straightforward, but sometimes I had difficulty assigning the dialogue.

I love reading about the art scene in New York City decades past, so this was right up my alley. It was a slow burn resolving that pivotal issue of publicizing the photo, but the author managed to keep the story interesting while it bore itself out. This was definitely a well-executed out-of-the-box (my favorite kind) story.

This is a strange book. While I found it compulsively readable, and finished it pretty quickly, I found myself baffled by the narrator and her odd journey to a kind of self-knowledge. I appreciated the portrait of a meaner, dirtier New York before it was taken over by hipsters, and the dilemma at the heart of the book—whether the narrator, Lu, should tell her neighbor that her breakthrough work of photography just happens to contain the image of her son falling to his death—is a rich, if slightly improbable, area of exploration. Why the author felt a need to attach both a ghost story and a coming-out story to this already complicated, overcrowded story remains a mystery to me. An ambitious if ultimately disappointing book.