Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Lowboy

3.16 of 5 stars 3.16 · rating details · 2,078 ratings · 450 reviews

Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-yearold paranoid schizophrenic, gets on an uptown B train alone. Like most people he knows, Will believes the world is being destroyed by climate change; unlike most people, he’s convinced he can do something about it. Unknown to his doctors, unknown to the police—unknown even to Violet Heller, his devoted mother—W...more

Hardcover, 258 pages

Published March 3rd 2009 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best Books of 2009

117th out of 1,229 books — 6,470 voters

The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert A. Heinlein

Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies by Martin H. Greenberg

Worst Cover Art

71st out of 301 books — 192 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Nov 17, 2009 Kim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, meh-at-you

Let me preface this review with this; I am in a rut. A literary rut, a professional rut, a metaphysical rut, a rut rut. Damn, I love the onomatopoeia that goes with that word… try it: grind your teeth together and spit the word out, let your tongue hit the back of your teeth with a little *pfft*. Yeah, you got it.

So, it was with a heavy sigh that I picked up this book. I can’t fully blame the book for this ‘meh’ of a rating. Not really. I wish I had something to blame.

Wray’s writing has been d...more

17 likes · like · see review

Apr 27, 2009 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Mike by: Jeff! -- and Tami. Their reviews made me scurry off to the libr

As so many reviewers note, this book is affecting and strange, often funny, and so smartly written.

That last bit--the disruptive lyrical energies of Wray's prose--was what most impressed and engaged me. Early on, as young Will/Lowboy has just gone underground, and we're just getting a bead on who he is, he converses with a fellow-passenger on the subway, "he glanced at the place on his wrist where his watch should have been. . . ." and seeing nothing there, "not even a paleness[, h:]e wondered...more As so many reviewers note, this book is affecting and strange, often funny, and so smartly written.

That last bit--the disruptive lyrical energies of Wray's prose--was what most impressed and engaged me. Early on, as young Will/Lowboy has just gone underground, and we're just getting a bead on who he is, he converses with a fellow-passenger on the subway, "he glanced at the place on his wrist where his watch should have been. . . ." and seeing nothing there, "not even a paleness[, h:]e wondered if he'd ever had a watch" (13). There is an endless surprise to the way Wray observes and describes. Our usual tacit understandings of how a certain kind of realism tells us certain kinds of things about the world are (as Violet thinks of Detective Lateef's curiosity in his office) thrown off the rails, dislocated. What we think we see, hear, feel, know is constantly dizzied, not in some scramble meant to approximate Will's own psyche (or at least not only that) but with a methodical 'madness' which asks us to ponder the deeply strange ways we all make sense. I found the book most unsettling in the best senses of that term: you didn't just engage with Will's otherness, his psychosis challenging the norm--it unfocused the false confidence of normalcy, took us down underneath the surface complacencies of social and psychological engagement to explore how we all construct mad, sad, angry, confused, scared, lustful, loving visions of our world and the people in it.

Which brings me to point two, Wray's empathetic portrayal of mental illness. Even as the novel flirts with thriller plotting, fuelling the narrative with the sense of threat so typical to stories of such illness, great pains are taken to ground us in Will's world, to see the dangers all around him as not isolated in his psychosis but more symptomatic of the world in which he is forced to travel. And Will's p.o.v. is not radically dislocated from others'; Ali Lateef, in particular, is a fascinating character, and Wray depicts him with the same kind of thoughtful attention to the idiosyncrasies which shape his worldview. In other words, without undercutting the real and serious difference of Will's mind, Wray avoids the two pat conventions of so many narratives of mental difference: he doesn't soften illness into a sweet pitiable innocence nor radically other it--instead defining how many strange differences underwrite all of our respective mental states.
I was a bit disappointed by a late-game plot twist which seemed to undercut some of that emphasis, for me. And I found the end heartbreaking but perhaps a little too determined by the thriller conventions he'd set up.

But I will read more Wray -- line by line, the book kept me on my toes, constantly surprised and delighted me. (less)

13 likes · like · see review

Mar 29, 2009 Jeff rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don't know what to say! This novel is truly a tour de force, a tense and suspenseful day in the life of a beautifully blonde, sixteen-year-old boy who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. I know the comparison is cliche, but imagine a Holden Caulfield-like figure off his meds having escaped the mental institution in which he's been placed while searching the streets of New York City to lose his virginity in order to save the world from global warming. John Wray burrows deep into the manically...more

6 likes · like · see review

Apr 21, 2012 Michael Shilling rated it 4 of 5 stars

Huh, so I went back and looked at Lowboy again, and I still think it's quite good, but this time around it feels a great deal thinner of character and has a number of unexplored / unearned conveniences, especially concerning the treatment the mother's illness. Still, it knocked me back hard and brought tears to my eyes.

Emotionally devastating, structurally perfect, and full of amazing sentences. Wray creates a consistent internal logic to Lowboy's schizophrenia -- which, considering the inheren...more

4 likes · like · see review

Mar 26, 2009 christa rated it 4 of 5 stars

There is this moment in John Wray's "Lowboy" where a character says to the schizophrenic hero: "Listen to me, Heller. You're beautiful and you make me laugh and I want you to take me to that place that we just saw, but you need to stop saying things like that. They creep me out, okay? And you're not creepy."

And that completely sums up the experience of reading this novel, which spans roughly a day in the life of young teenager Will "Lowboy" Heller.

The story opens with him on the lam in the New...more There is this moment in John Wray's "Lowboy" where a character says to the schizophrenic hero: "Listen to me, Heller. You're beautiful and you make me laugh and I want you to take me to that place that we just saw, but you need to stop saying things like that. They creep me out, okay? And you're not creepy."

And that completely sums up the experience of reading this novel, which spans roughly a day in the life of young teenager Will "Lowboy" Heller.

The story opens with him on the lam in the New York subway system after spending a year and a half institutionalized. He is hell-bent on saving the world from global warming, and believes he can do this by losing his virginity.

In alternating bite-sized chapters his mysterious mother, a beautiful, hard-to-read immigrant with an indiscernible accent, is paired with detective Ali Lateef and is searching for Lowboy, hoping to find him before he hurts someone or himself.

Lowboy's chapters are a collection of dizzy sentences, more paintings than linear thought. One minute he is deciding to buy cupcakes, but then the simple acts of ordering what he wants and exchanging money become too complicated. It's like the wheel in his brain gets caught up on a cog and suddenly everything becomes distorted and chaotic until he can slow down and start again.

His mother, whom he calls Violet, provides Lowboy's backstory via Lateef's interrogation. Most chapters include some new piece of information that explains who Lowboy is, how he got there, and what he wants. But also leaves questions and a growing suspicion that there is more to the story.

This book is technically sound: Lowboy is likable and unpredictable and interesting. And like that character, I did want to beg him to stop talking like that. Meanwhile, Violet's day-long relationship with Lateef is tricky to define: antagonistic? flirtatious? I'm not sure how Wray invented this or juggled it, but there are no seams showing.

My only complaint is that my own lack of familiarity with the subway system made it hard to envision exactly where the characters were, or where they were headed. Especially when the descriptions are coming from Lowboy. So I got a little confused.

Also, I have a question about the ending, so someone needs to read this ASAP so we can talk about it. (less)

5 likes · like · see review

Mar 07, 2009 Don rated it 5 of 5 stars

(FROM MY BLOG): Walk along a street in downtown Seattle. You see them everywhere. Wild-eyed men and women. Dirty, dishevelled, mumbling to themselves or yelling at the universe. Crazy people, more like scary forces of nature than human beings. Beings we nervously evade as we see them approach.

Except, of course, they aren't non-human. John Wray's novel Lowboy shows us how much humanity schizophrenics do share with the rest of us --a story being perhaps the only way we are ever apt to experience t...more (FROM MY BLOG): Walk along a street in downtown Seattle. You see them everywhere. Wild-eyed men and women. Dirty, dishevelled, mumbling to themselves or yelling at the universe. Crazy people, more like scary forces of nature than human beings. Beings we nervously evade as we see them approach.

Except, of course, they aren't non-human. John Wray's novel Lowboy shows us how much humanity schizophrenics do share with the rest of us --a story being perhaps the only way we are ever apt to experience that commonality, unless we actually have the nerve to sit down and talk to one.

Will Heller, who calls himself "Lowboy," is a highly intelligent, unusually attractive 16-year-old who possesses a detailed knowledge of the New York subway system. He's a man on a mission, a mission to save the planet from global warming, and he has less than 24 hours to do it. To accomplish his mission, it is essential -- for reasons that make a vague sort of sense, given his assumptions -- that he lose his virginity. He is a paranoid schizophrenic, and he is on the loose from his psychiatric facility. He has stopped taking his medications.

It takes us some time to understand even this much about Lowboy, because the story is told primarily from Lowboy's own, confused point of view. Later chapters offer us other aspects of the story from the points of view of his immigrant mother "Violet," who has her own problems, and of police detective Ali Lateef who is working with her to locate the boy.

Lowboy is acutely observant of everything about him. (After finishing the book, I'll never forget that the dual-tone chime you hear on the subway, warning that the doors are about to close, is C-sharp to A.) His illness causes him to find significance in insignificant occurrences, much as Greeks and Romans did in the flights of birds or the appearance of animal entrails. He knows that he is ill. He understands that the voices he hears -- sometimes loud, sometimes as a murmur, sometimes sensed only as the indistinct roaring of a dynamo -- are part of his illness. He realizes that his symptoms increase and decrease over time. In fact, at the age of 12, when his symptoms first began but were still controllable, he read everything he could find in the library on the subject of schizophrenia. But he doesn't -- he can't -- understand enough.

The story reads partly as an adventure. We don't quite understand Lowboy's quest, but we want him to succeed. His quest takes place largely within the dark, subterranean realm of the subway system, itself a metaphor for a certain twisted, noisy, and confusing set of limitations on reality. The book also reads as a detective novel, as Lateef attempts to untangle confusing clues he obtains from Lowboy's mother, psychiatrist, and one-time girlfriend, and to locate and apprehend the boy before he injures either himself or another person. Again the story reads at times as a peculiar story of romance, the same detective finding himself falling in love with the boy's mother, for reasons he doesn't understand.

But mostly, the novel is an immersion in the mind of a young man who is precociously bright and likeable and in a sense idealistic, but whose perspective on the world is far different from our own -- a kid who thinks deeply and observes much that we would miss, but who overlooks simple meanings and conclusions that we would find obvious.

The ending is exciting and unexpected. This book is unquestionably one where you want to learn how it ends yourself -- not hear it from a friend or read it in a review.

Schizophrenia, some say, should be considered not a disease but simply an alternative way of viewing reality. After reading Lowboy, none of us would voluntarily subject ourselves to that experience. But we understand better the peculiar logic -- and even, possibly, strange beauty -- of the thoughts circling within the confused minds of those crazy guys we see on the street.
(less)

6 likes · like · see review

Dec 17, 2012 Jason added it

Shelves: read-2009

Lowboy spends its time divided between two sets of people. First there is the protagonist, who picked up the name Lowboy at a mental institution in a conversation that makes absolutely no sense and is perfectly suited to the types of conversation had in this novel. The other person is Ali Lateef, originally Rufus White until his father's unfortunate conversion, a missing persons detective tasked with finding the boy and accompanied by the beautiful and strange mother.

What is difficult at times...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 13, 2011 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Alan by: Mike Reynolds

Shelves: novels, read-in-2011

ordered this from the library, when I got there it was a large print edition. Are they trying to tell me something? Mind you it is so easy to read..

..review will follow. Trying to catch up, been busy...
just a few notes I made at the time: I was sucked up into the boy’s ‘crazy’ but ‘logical’ schizophrenic world (eg. a TV is a microscope with a big blue eye behind it) where buying a cupcake is a tantamount to destroying the world, and where his old girlfriend has to guide him and be careful for he...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 07, 2012 Holly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

4 Stars.

At once beautifully written, and truly disturbing, Lowboy was a reading experience I won't soon forget. The main character of Will Hellar has made a huge impression on me. And it is that fact that makes the ultimate resolution to this dark, dark story so heartbreaking.

Read the full review on my blog:
http://ravingbookaddict.blogspot.com

More book reviews on my YT channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Bookgasmic

1 like · like · see review

Jun 14, 2009 Jenn rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

3 likes · like · see review

Dec 27, 2010 Odd_bloke rated it 4 of 5 stars

Lowboy, by John Wray is a novel about a schizophrenic teenager who calls himself Lowboy. There are two main threads to the story, that of Lowboy who escapes his handlers in a subway station into the tunnels themselves, and that of his mother and the police officer assigned to find him.[return][return]I enjoyed the novel a great deal. The Lowboy thread helped me to understand what having Lowboy's condition might feel like, the constant shifting of attentions and the extrasensory feelings he was h...more

like · see review

Jun 17, 2013 Rachael Gilkey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Part thriller, part coming-of-age and save-the-world adventure (making the whiny Harry Potter's face off with scary ol' Voldemort look quite tame), John Wray's LOWBOY takes the reader on a journey through the eyes and ears of a sixteen year old paranoid schizophrenic on a mission of utmost importance.

On November 11, Lowboy escapes into the New York City subway system from the institution he has been locked up in for the past two years. Wray alternates chapters between Lowboy's narrative, and tha...more

like · see review

Apr 24, 2013 Bjorn rated it 3 of 5 stars

There's something about the New York subway that's mythical, more idea than perceived reality. Hell, to someone who grew up only learning about the city from books, movies and songs, the whole thing is mythical, but especially the subway. It's what runs underneath, connects without being seen. Its underground. For instance, since I always tend to approach books from music, the Velvet Underground become the Velvet Underground for real in one of the early demos, when John Cale (an immigrant, of co...more

like · see review

May 16, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 3 of 5 stars

Man, I’m going for some candy reading next. Visit from the Goon Squad was head-spinning bizarre. Invisible Bridge was enough gut wrenching on its own, though the storytelling style is fairly straightforward. But then I went to Lowboy without investigating.

I’d read another by Wray a while back, its details not clear in my memory, but good enough apparently to keep him on my list for another try, so I downloaded Lowboy. The first, The Right Hand of Sleep (See WW Mon., 9/14/09), once I refreshed my...more Man, I’m going for some candy reading next. Visit from the Goon Squad was head-spinning bizarre. Invisible Bridge was enough gut wrenching on its own, though the storytelling style is fairly straightforward. But then I went to Lowboy without investigating.

I’d read another by Wray a while back, its details not clear in my memory, but good enough apparently to keep him on my list for another try, so I downloaded Lowboy. The first, The Right Hand of Sleep (See WW Mon., 9/14/09), once I refreshed my memory, I realized was another Nazi/Soviet tale, and I feared I’d let myself in for more of what I complained about at the beginning of the last entry. But not to worry. No Nazi’s here. But an easy book? Johnboy apparently doesn’t know how.

He chooses to explore paranoid schizophrenia. Will has gone off his meds, left the hospital, and gone off on a Manhattan quest to save the world. He’s “Lowboy” because 1) he keeps to the subways. A pretty obvious womb/vagina metaphor. 2) He’s a useless piece of furniture, short on drawers and height, unlike the more elegant and utilitarian highboy. Will has a sense of urgency about his journey because global warning will destroy the earth by nightfall if he doesn’t get where he’s going and do what he’s supposed to do. That much is clear to us, the reader, but because we spend much of our time seeing the world through Will’s p-schizophrenic eyes, it’s pretty hard to tell the what’s and why’s of much of the story. And Wray doesn’t mean us to. It’s part of the story’s experience to live inside Will’s mind, and if you try to make too much logical real-world sense of it, you will never enter the book. It reminds me of Faulkner’s great feat with Benjy in The Sound and the Fury.

Parallel with Will’s journey is that of detective Ali Lateef (who changed his name from Rufus Lamarck White for reasons never explained), and Will’s mother, who pair up to pursue Will before he accidentally or on purpose harms himself or someone else. It’s not a whodunit because you never know what was done, if anything. It’s more of a stop-it-before-it-strikes, except you’re never sure what’s striking, where or when or to what effect.

Confused? That’s the only way to enjoy the book. Give yourself up to the state of turmoil, don’t ask for clarity. By the end you’ll have had an exciting, if painful and baffling reading experience. And if you’re like me, you will be glad you picked the book up, but not all that sorry to put it down even though it was a rich and challenging read.

(less)

1 like · like · see review

May 11, 2012 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

The immortal poet Chastity (in 10 Things I Hate about You) once said, "I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?" I did not think so, until now.

Lowboy is a short, meandering book about Will Heller, a paranoid schizophrenic wandering around New York City, and also--in alternating chapters--about his mother and the police detective who have teamed up to search for him. Will is on a strange, vague mission to cool down the earth before global warm...more The immortal poet Chastity (in 10 Things I Hate about You) once said, "I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?" I did not think so, until now.

Lowboy is a short, meandering book about Will Heller, a paranoid schizophrenic wandering around New York City, and also--in alternating chapters--about his mother and the police detective who have teamed up to search for him. Will is on a strange, vague mission to cool down the earth before global warming destroys it (losing his virginity is a key component of the plan), and Violet (Will's mother) and Ali (the detective) are trying to locate him before he injures either himself or Emily, Will's former girlfriend whom he pushed onto a set of subway tracks as a train approached the station (which is also the reason why Will ended up in the mental hospital from which he's just been released).

Above, you'll note, I described Lowboy as "meandering," which would probably take most of the book's fans by surprise, as they all seem to consider it to be fast-paced and thrilling and compelling and page-turning, etc. I don't agree. I struggled for nearly six weeks to finish this 250-page book, but other things kept pulling my attention away from it--quite easily, in fact. It just occurred to me, with a shock, that I read Moby-Dick in less time.

I hate to dump on contemporary novels, especially when the author's intention was good and noble (after all, I couldn't write one--despite trying on numerous occasions), but this is a case where the book just didn't speak to me. I'd been quite eager to read this one; its subject matter is right up my alley (mental illness, New York City's underbelly, and young, confused love)--but for some reason it just didn't click. John Wray's prose is serviceable but not as rich as I'd hoped, and toward the end I was reading it not to find out what happened but merely so I could be done with it. At no point did the (ultimately shoulder-shrugging) mysteries draw me in, nor did I care much about the fates of the three main characters. I didn't hate the book by any means, but I didn't particularly like it, either. The whole thing was simply . . . whelming.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 07, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a brilliant book, a masterpiece. Because it has the ability to bring about such intense emotional reactions and is so riveting, writing an adequate review of it is very difficult. It is like trying to describe why I get goosebumps when I listen to my favorite symphony played by the greatest orchestra or trying to describe why I felt the way I did when I first saw Botticelli's paintings at the Uffizi Museum in Florence.

This book is about a schizophrenic adolescent named Lowboy. Lowboy lik...more

like · see review

Dec 19, 2011 Michael rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary_fiction

Underwhelming.

I expected more from this novel, though it is hard to say precisely what I had hoped for. Early reviews were near raves, and I can objectively see why: There is much to admire in the prose. It is controlled and appropriately claustrophobic and smart. Wray is intent on getting us inside the head of a paranoid schizophrenic, and I suppose he succeeds, as far as that goes.

But I found myself thinking "So what?" throughout much of this. I suppose I wanted some grander context-setting, s...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 14, 2011 Kata S. rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had darker more violent hopes for the plot of Lowboy and more specifically the character, William Heller. Perhaps a majority of readers do not like such darkness, but my personal taste for it was not quenched with this book. I tasted a bad Hollywood movie staring Macaulay Culkin. It was an decent quick read (beats most trash thrillers) but I wonder whether Wray has the ability to really dip his fingers into something more psychologically disturbing and violent. The talent is there. He just nee...more

like · see review

Aug 11, 2011 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

I so wanted to love this book. The premise sounded so intriguing. A 16-year-old teenager with Schizophrenia, Will Heller, rides the NYC subway all day long in an effort to save the world. By having sex. Which will cool off his body. So, yeah, that last part is strange, but the mental health aspect combined with the NYC aspect piqued my interests.

First, the goods. No one can accuse the author of not being a good writer. Because the writing was engaging and otherwise well done. I also thought his...more

like · see review

Apr 25, 2011 Abeer Hoque rated it 3 of 5 stars

"LowBoy" by John Wray is about William Heller, a schizophrenic teenage boy who flees a mental hospital into the New York City subway system. It's also about the detective who pursues Will, his elegant European mother, and his tragic girl love. But it's the NYC subway which emerges as the most captivating character of all, complete with mythical river, underground palace and hell, rat infested water logged tunnels, and thundering trains.

Mr. Wray does an admirable job of recreating the mind of a...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 17, 2011 Willem van den Oever rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: in-english

Author John Wray tells his story of ‘Lowboy’ - a teenager suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, who escapes from his mental institution and hides away in the New York underground - with a sharp eye for detail that helps give the tale punch without slowing down its breakneck pace. Most impressive though, are his descriptions of Lowboy’s thoughts as the boy suffers more and more from the lack of his medications. The line between reality and fantasy starts fading away and the unpredictability of t...more

like · see review

Feb 06, 2011 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I've discovered that, for me at least, there's disturbing between novels about mental disease written by mentally-diseased authors, and novels about mental disease written by sane authors. For example: I couldn't finish David Foster Wallace's semi-autobiographical novel Infinite Jest because the author's own mental illness intruded so deeply into the story. I was constantly aware of the fact that Wallace's depression finally got the better of him and led him to commit suicide. It freaked me out,...more

like · see review

Oct 01, 2010 Kevin Nielsen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am not a good critic if one is looking for criticism here. I like to mention what I like and not break another writer's story down as far as plot and characters go...at least thats how I feel today.

Ok, Lowboy....thought it was a good read, not in my tour-de-force category, though. What I liked about it were the passages concerning the underground. Wray deconstructs and illuminates the tedium and magnifies the minutia with much skill.

Lowboy lost in the crowd - "Whole families pushed past him a...more

like · see review

Sep 26, 2010 Gerald rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I got this in a Goodreads giveaway... thanks publishers... so here's the promised review.

There is lots of good stuff in this novel.... the setting of largely subterranean Manhattan (although the beauty of it - whilst mentioned by one of the characters once, is never fully utilised); the depictions of Schizophrenia; the ruminations on love and affection and the central relationships forming the structure of the narrative.

The biggest problem for me, was that the eponymous Lowboy and his adventures...more

like · see review

Dec 14, 2009 Courtney rated it 3 of 5 stars

Will Heller has stopped taking his meds, and when the moment is right, he runs. "Lowboy" - the novel's name is Will's nickname for himself - follows our schizophrenic protagonist on a thrilling, scary and smartly conceived ride through New York's subway system, and a few other places.

Will, 16 years old, believes that global warming is escalating along a parabolic curve. Only he can stop the world's temperature games, the impending apocalypse, but to succeed he has to have sex by the end of the d...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 13, 2009 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: drug and former drug users

Young paranoid schizophrenic goes off his meds and onto a quest. Unlike other fictional characters who could easily find a magical forest in which to quest, our hero is forced instead to travel the NYC subway system, and suffers from a diseased mind place of magical powers. Like many young people at that age he has more hormones than blood running through his veins; his quest is to save the world by means of fuck.

I've heard it said that the previous books by this author were more experimental an...more

1 like · like · see review

Sep 04, 2009 Vegantrav rated it 3 of 5 stars

John Wray provides us with a dual-perspective story: (1) a day in the life of a schizophrenic, William Heller, whose nickname is Lowboy. Will has just been released from a mental hospital and has been off his medications for some time, so he is his normal, paranoid self rather than his medicated, "flat" self. He is convinced that he must save the world from overheating. He will do this by having sex with Emily, a girl who, some years before, he had pushed onto the subway tracks, though she escap...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 23, 2009 Kasandra rated it 4 of 5 stars

I gave this 4 stars because of the quality of the writing, particularly that from the protagonist's perspective. It sucked me right in. But once the perspective shifted, and as the story progressed, I felt disappointed. The story is good -- I read the book in only 3 sittings --but oddly flat emotionally. I enjoyed it primarily for Wray's writing in the voice of a paranoid schizophrenic.

Have to say, he could have used a better editor, OR (in my first example, coming up) he was trying to throw in...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 17, 2009 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

William Heller (a.k.a. Lowboy) is a paranoid schizophrenic who believes that the world will end in ten hours due to a sudden, apocalyptic episode of global warming. Unless he loses his virginity. He thinks of this as releasing "the world inside" him, an idea he's picked up from a National Geographic article on Buddhism. He has mixed up global warming rhetoric with the pharmaceutically induced shifts in his body's temperature.

The book's marketers have opted to market this book as more of a psych...more

1 like · like · see review

May 02, 2009 Pankhuree rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: genre-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

2 likes · like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
John Wray's Facebook Fan Page!	1	6	Mar 24, 2010 08:36am

combine
Other Editions (29)

More editions...

Videos About This Book

Add a comment

Zach Galifianakis interviews John Wray about Lowboy

1 comment

Genres

Young Adult

18 users

Mental Health > Mental Illness

9 users

Book Club

9 users

Novels

9 users

Contemporary

7 users

Psychology

6 users

Adult

6 users

Suspense

5 users

Literature > American

5 users

New York

5 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Fever Chart
by Bill Cotter
Miles from Nowhere
by Nami Mun
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
by Wells Tower
Big Machine
by Victor LaValle
Robin and Ruby
by K.M. Soehnlein

About John Wray

John Wray is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, Lowboy, The Right Hand of Sleep and Canaan's Tongue. He was named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007. The recipient of a Whiting Award, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

More about John Wray...

Books by John Wray

South Sea Vagabonds: A New Zealand Classic Adventure of the Sea (The Mariner's Library)

Dangers of an entire repeal of the Bank Restriction Act and a plan suggested for obviating them

Leeds United And A Life In The Press Box

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Lowboy

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Lowboy

“Papír prášky papír knihy léků papír recepty. Moje postel jako obálka a uvnitř milostný dopis lehce pokropený parfémem. Někdo mu říkal eau de bažant. Mohl jsem se ti poslat poštou Emily ale ty bys mě vrátila, adresát nezastižen. Ne? Jestli ne tak mi řekni ještě jednu věc četla jsi ten dopis pořádně věnovala jsi mu veškerou pozornost Emily pochopila jsi ho? Všimla sis toho o tunelu je to legrační věc jediný a jedinečný Tunel lásky. Porozuměla jsi tomu dopisu Emily posloucháš mě vůbec? Slyším jak posloucháš slyším jak dýcháš nemusím se ptát jestli jsi vypuštěná nebo vyschlá nebo žívá. Jsem zamilovaný Emily! Pomohla bys mi trošku? Pomohla bys mi a svlékla se a roztáhla nohy?” — 0 people liked it

“V říjnu mi někdo začal říkat Spodek. Velmi nemocný muž co mluvil měkce on věřil že je zdravý. Víš co je spodek? ptal se mě. Nikdy se na mě nepodíval a mluvil smutným nóbl hlasem. Slyšel jsi o něm někdy? Řekl jsem že ne a on přikývl a zatvářil se smutně. Spodek je karta řekl. Vypadá skoro jako filek jen je nižší. Ale zase je vyšší než desítka. Spodek filek král a eso. Nic jsem neřekl a on po chvíli zapomněl že tam jsem a začal plivat na sestry. Když jsem ho viděl druhý den zeptal jsem se ho proč mi říkal Spodek. Zastavil se a chvíli o tom přemýšlel. Spodek je karta k ničemu řekl. Filek, to je jiná.” — 0 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Lowboy
avg rating	preview: Lowboy Goodreads rating: 3.16 (2078 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3380813-lowboy?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312011177l/3380813.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3380813-lowboy?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Lowboy by John Wray[/url]

Lowboy

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website