![]() Though the novel’s time frame is just a few hours of one night, it’s a night of 'a shattered flicker-drag of these sense-jumbled memories' and one in which 'the solid world dissolves then coheres like broken sleep, and he shambles into it, remembering.' In other words, the night’s as big as Shy’s life. With uncharacteristically printable eloquence, the usually profane Shy sees the building as being 'hunched over the garden like a chunk of grumpy history.' Despite the best efforts of the saintly-patient staff, it’s a grim place, not least because 'the boys just rip and rip at each other, endless patterns of attack and response, like flirting’s grim twin.' The book’s true setting, however, is the sprawling, shifting terrain of Shy’s mind. ![]() ![]() ![]() The ostensible setting is an institution called Last Chance, a boarding school for troubled boys in a dilapidated old house in the countryside. Shy’s disordered, multidimensional consciousness careens through Max Porter’s brief and brilliant fourth book, a bravura, extended-mix of a novel that skitters, pulses, fractures and coalesces again with all the exhilaration and doom of broken beats and heavy bass lines. ![]()
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