For such a short work, I found Shy to be incredibly affecting. Centred in the brain of a disturbed and confused young man as he sneaks out of a reform school in the dead of night, the story and the sentences and the tone are all off-puttingly disturbed and confusing. We wincingly watch Shy struggling under the weight of a flint-stuffed backpack as he effects his escape, and the many questions that that initiating scenario brings up will eventually be answered by the thoughts and memories and jumbled emotions that swirl uncontrollably through Shy’s mind. His memories are filled with rage and violence and uncontrollable tears; he suffers terrifying dreams and waking shame; every bad thing he’s ever done plays on an unbidden loop in Shy’s mind and he responds with aggression and destruction that he neither understands or attempts to control. The jumbled storytelling can be hard to follow, and the violence and mental illness don’t make for a “nice” story, but it feels like author Max Porter has captured something true and worth considering from the inside of a disturbed mind. Shy might not be likeable or relatable, but he’s a broken teenager and it’s provoking to be asked to care about him and his fate. I was correspondingly provoked and captivated; I couldn’t ask for more from a novel of triple the length.

Brilliant. The poetic exploration of form underscores a deep complexity that mental health has when one is played by depression.