Shy

Description

Things keep slipping up for Shy. All he wants is sex, spliffs and his ownturntables, and for all the red noise in his mind to disappear. But again andagain he spirals past his senses and ends up with his head in his hands andcarnage around him. You mustn't do that to yourself Shy. You mustn't hurt yourself like that. He's been kicked out of two schools, been cautioned, arrested, stabbed hisstepdad in the finger and bottled a former Tumble Tots playmate, but it's thetaunts and teasing of his new schoolmates that haunt Shy. Shy's got no armpit hair / Shy needs fake ID to buy fags / Got your specialmeds, nutcase? At Last Chance - a home for 'very disturbed young men' - he is surrounded bypeople who want to help him, but his night terrors aren't getting any better. The night is huge and it hurts. So tonight he's stepping into it, with the haunted beginnings of a plan.

Max Porter's first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers,won the Sunday Times/Peters, Fraser + Dunlop YoungWriter of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize,the Europese Literatuurprijs and the BAMB Readers'Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First BookAward and the Goldsmiths Prize. His second novel, Lanny,was a Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for theBooker Prize. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He has previously worked as a bookseller and editorand has also written The Death of Francis Bacon, the shortfilm All of this Unreal Time and the pamphlet It's Going toBe a Bright New Day.