The Quiet Boy
by Ben H. Winters
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Pub Date May 18 2021 | Archive Date Jun 18 2021
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Description
From the "inventive...entertaining and thought-provoking" (Charles Yu) New York Times-bestselling author of Underground Airlines and Golden State, this sweeping legal thriller follows a sixteen-year-old who suffers from a neurological condition that has frozen him in time—and the team of lawyers, doctors, and detectives who are desperate to wake him up.
In 2008, a cheerful ambulance-chasing lawyer named Jay Shenk persuades the grieving Keener family to sue a private LA hospital. Their son Wesley has been transformed by a routine surgery into a kind of golem, absent all normal functioning or personality, walking in endless empty circles around his hospital room. In 2019, Shenk—still in practice but a shell of his former self—is hired to defend Wesley Keener’s father when he is charged with murder . . . the murder, as it turns out, of the expert witness from the 2008 hospital case. Shenk’s adopted son, a fragile teenager in 2008, is a wayward adult, though he may find his purpose when he investigates what really happened to the murdered witness.
Two thrilling trials braid together, medical malpractice and murder, jostling us back and forth in time.
The Quiet Boy is a book full of mysteries, not only about the death of a brilliant scientist, not only about the outcome of the medical malpractice suit, but about the relationship between children and their parents, between the past and the present, between truth and lies. At the center of it all is Wesley Keener, endlessly walking, staring empty-eyed, in whose quiet, hollow body may lie the fate of humankind.
Advance Praise
"I get excited any time Ben Winters has a new book coming out. His writing is so intelligent, his worlds so inventive, and his novels have a rare combination of being equally entertaining and thought-provoking. I will read anything by Ben Winters, and am always eager to see what he does next." —Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown
“The always-surprising Ben H. Winters writes books that combine genres, infusing the realistic with the fantastical. . . . Winters is such a fine writer that by the time he asks you to suspend your disbelief, you’ll follow him anywhere." — Sarah Lyall, New York Times Book Review
"The Quiet Boy is an utterly enthralling read. It is a novel with a philosophical spine, a tender pulse and prose propelled by rocket fuel. An eerie mystery, a captivating legal thriller, and an examination of the lengths we will go to for the ones we love, Winters infuses this page-turner with a graceful contemplation of humanity and our inner wiring. The Quiet Boy kept me guessing until the very end.” — Kira Jane Buxton, author of Hollow Kingdom
"I'm a huge fan of Ben H. Winters! This book is wonderfully dark and thoughtful and deeply humane, while at the same time it's a riveting page-turner. I'm in awe of how good this guy is!" — Dan Chaon, bestselling and National Book Award-nominated author of Ill Will
“The Quiet Boy is a multi-genre delight: part sci-fi, part legal drama, and part detective novel, with all of it infused with insight, wisdom, and humor. And at the core of the novel are the beautiful portraits of an unusual father and an unusual son and their story of love lost and then regained.” — Jonathan Ames, author of A Man Named Doll and creator of Bored to Death
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780316505444 |
| PRICE | $28.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 448 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Jen C, Media/Journalist
It's hard to summarize this kaleidoscope of a novel, but Jay Shenk, a lawyer, convinces a bereaved family to sue a hospital in Los Angeles after their son went in for routine surgery and emerges as a hybrid zombie-golem. Shenk must defend the family’s patriarch after he’s charged with murder. There is a lot going on in the narrative and I was tickled by all of it. This is a laugh out loud funny, bizarre creative book that weaves together a murder mystery and medical drama. I found myself grateful to be in Winters’ deft hands.
Reviewer 173301
The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters is a superb read with a well defined plot and characters. Well worth the read!
Joe H, Reviewer
THE QUIET BOY
Ben H. Winters
Mulholland Books
ISBN-13: 978-0316505444
Hardcover
Thriller
THE QUIET BOY is a haunting work that sinks its hook into the from the first page and never lets go even after its story has ended. Author Ben H. Winters is primarily known for his works of speculative fiction, particularly his Last Policeman trilogy. He stretches his considerable talent even further in this atmospheric, genre-blurring tale that is by turns mysterious, puzzling, and ultimately frightening.
THE QUIET BOY ping-pongs back and forth between 2008 and 2019. It is told in a third-person, quasi-wiseass narrative style that befits the professional demeanor of Jay Albert Shenk, one of its primary protagonists. Shenk is a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in personal injury and malpractice cases. Winters introduces him in the mix of the story by taking the reader through Shenk’s method of locating and acquiring clients through a combination of stringer referrals, legal acumen, and Las Vegas schmooze. He is assisted in this endeavor by his adopted son Ruben, who is being groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps. Shenk in 2008 believes he has a winning case when he persuades the parents of fourteen-year-old Wesley Keener to retain him for a medical malpractice action. Wesley had sustained a head injury while engaged in otherwise innocent horseplay at school and underwent emergency brain surgery. He displays in the aftermath of the surgery bizarre symptoms which include the apparent inability to communicate, eat or sleep, among other things. Wesley simply walks. It is like nothing anyone has ever seen. That singular fact is actually a problem for the case, one which Shenk is sure that he can overcome with the right witness. As the time for trial approaches he thinks he has found the right one. In the 2019 sections of THE QUIET BOY, however, it is clear that things have not worked out as planned for either the Shenks or the Keeners. Ruben, whose nickname is “Rabbi,” is working as a food prepper in a salad restaurant and is all but estranged from Jay, who he worshipped as a teenager and who is struggling to keep his law practice afloat. The Keeners are in even worse shape, trying to make ends meet to provide Wesley, who is still walking, with the care he needs. They are all brought back together when Richard, Wesley’s father, is accused of murdering one of the expert witnesses in the malpractice trial which occurred ten years before. Beth, Wesley’s mother, asks Jay to represent Richard. Jay reluctantly agrees, although he has absolutely no experience in criminal defense practice. It would be an uphill slog even under the best circumstances, given that Richard, who was found with the murdered victim while holding the literal smoking gun in his hand, readily admits his guilt, does not want legal representation, and is prepared to accept a death penalty. Jay enlists an equally reluctant Ruben as a private investigator --- this occurs as a result of a comedy of errors --- and as a result of a combination of plausible happenstance and dogged persistence uncovers what actually occurred, both in the present and the past. Some light is ultimately shed on the “why” and “what” of poor Wesley as well.
If you think while you are reading THE QUIET BOY that it is a courtroom thriller you would partially be right, though it is a mystery and in some very special ways a supernatural thriller as well, and a hair-raising one at that. The revelations concerning Wesley which are saved for the conclusion of THE QUIET BOY are chilling, to say the least, and turn the entire story on its literal head. No peeking. You won’t get it anyway without knowing what went before. Let’s just say that my inclination on finishing THE QUIET BOY was to round up my children, all of whom are well into their adulthood, and hide them away. That happens when you read a novel with powerful plotting and characterization, and THE QUIET BOY has it by the truckful. Strongly recommended.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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