ethereal

Our reader had first heard of John Wray a few years ago in a frivolous magazine profile of a group of writers who regularly shared a meal together and supported one another.  He was so enamored of the group, of the idea of this group, so desired to have such a community of support and connection that he resolved to read something from each member of that dinner klatch at some point and began to looking for examples of their work in bargain basements and used bookshops.  Although he had found and purchased a book or two by other members of the group, he didn’t read anything until Wray’s Lowboy was released in the Spring of 2009 at the same time that he was unencumbered by other obligations and could afford to read again.  It had been some time since he had been free to spend time with novels and he had swore to return to reading seriously that Spring.

Wray’s novel became one of the few that he made a priority, but still it took him weeks to finish it as his other obligations returned and once again began consuming his time.  Still, the story commanded enough attention that he was able to continue making that time, that he didn’t feel comfortable leaving the story behind, unfinished and abandoned.  He felt that most important of readerly emotions: curiosity about the outcome, anticipation of the ending.  He wanted to know what would happen and how.

He continued reading, then, continued to the end to find out whether sixteen year-old, escaped schizophrenic Will Heller, Lowboy, would lose his virginity and with whom.  He kept reading to discover whether Detective Lateef and Will’s mother, Violet, would find him.  He pressed on to learn Lowboy’s fate and that of his protectors.  He read on to confirm the particulars of the secret that Wray had withheld from his readers, that hides within the folds of this novel.

Our reader knew a secret revelation was coming and did not find the secret, upon revelation, surprising.  Rather he expected it.  His first clue was how uniform the voice remained even through the multiply subjective voiced narration, each chapter alternating between a third person rendering of Will’s escape and one of his mother’s search for him.  Thus clued into the identity, the sharing between the protagonists, he came remarkably close to voicing Wray’s secret out loud very early while reading the story.  The revelation struck him as satisfying because inevitable.  First the writer must make their rendering of a plot credible, then they should try to make it inevitable.  And so our reader found Wray’s tale to be both credible and inevitable.

Until the final paragraph.  Our reader feels cheated by that final paragraph because the events, the action of that paragraph remain obscure to him, uncertain.  He does not feel he knows Will Heller’s fate.  Did he die upon that platform or was Wray simply allowing his story to merge with the wailing of the trains, dissolving into the whitest of noises?  Our reader may never know.