Books for Teenage Boys
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“[Wray’s] third novel, Lowboy, is his best yet . . . Lowboy is told in a series of impressionistic flashes . . . and it moves with extremely confident speed to its heart-wrenching conclusion.” —Steve Donoghue, The OLM Blog, Open Letters“Wray’s writing is tremendously smart and perceptive.” —Alison Hallett, The Portland Mercury“Occasionally comical and consistently tragic, Lowboy is an engaging novel with a difficult subject.” —Mark Flanagan, About.com“[Lowboy is] truly remarkable!” —Leah Taylor, Flavorwire“Strange and splendid . . . What makes Lowboy extraordinary is its rapt conviction, not the cool manipulation of plot devices.” —Craig Seligman, Bloomberg.com“John Wray’s latest novel, Lowboy, is a compelling tale that captures the foreign internal and external landscapes of a teenager with mental illness . . . Wray depicts Will’s descent into both the subway system and mental illness in clear, glittering prose . . . John Wray’s writing itself is like a blessing, and reading Lowboy, while not a religious experience, is perhaps as close as a person can come to experiencing the mix of poignant and desperate emotions and actions that come together in a teenager with mental illness.”—Doug Robins, Sacramento Book Review“John Wray’s prose is at once spare and powerful, comic and profound, and as his protagonist’s fate unfolds, the suspense rises until the very last line.” —Sandra Mangan, The Evening News“Wray has created a novel that is rich in characters and insights. You may be able to finish it in half a day, but William’s view of the world will almost certainly stay with you for longer.” —Marcel Thee, Jarkarta Globe“[Lowboy] is weird and horribly sad, but balanced and completely believable. [It] will leave a gnawing pain in your stomach, like hunger or fear or the feeling that he’s got it all right.” —Micah Ling, Keyhole“Dizzyingly seductive . . . Making your central character deeply insane is, of course, a risky and ambitious trick, but Wray carries it off with a fluid, inventive style that rises at times to a frightening pitch.” —Michael Lindgren, The Washington Post
“Wray’s pacing is superb . . . [and his] writing shines . . . This is a fine novel by a talented writer.” —Gordon Houser, The Wichita Eagle
“Wray spins out an increasingly suspenseful, psychologically astute narrative, perfectly pitching the voice to accommodate each character’s particular motivations.” —Eric Liebetrau, Paste Magazine
“Lowboy is an incredibly competent novel from a young, clearly passionate writer . . . Wray deposits moments of exposition at key points in his apparent madcap narrative, showing the careful planning and loving consideration of a first-rate writing talent. His prose flies along with the unstoppable force of a subway train, but he can still make me pause and wring my heart out over poor Lowboy.” —Jillian J. Goodman, The Harvard Crimson“John Wray handles it all masterfully in this odd story [that is] part sci-fi parable, part mental health drama, part love story.” —Ralph Greco, Jr., Short and Sweet NYC blog
Wray's critically acclaimed new novel Lowboy is about a 16-year-old schizophrenic who has wandered away from the mental hospital into the subway tunnels believing that the world will end within a few hours and that only he can save it.
Go inside WNYC's studio and see Wray's interview with Leonard Lopate.
New York City commuters read from the opening pages of Lowboy.
John Wray reads a letter from his title character, Lowboy, written to his mother, Violet, while Lowboy was inside a mental health facilty. The camera is shaky only for a little while.
Time Out New York posted segments of John Wray's subway reading on March 12.
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