John Wray’s Lowboy is a thriller, a coming of age novel, and an immersion into the head of a schizophrenic boy.  It is a mystery, a race that pits a detective above ground against the boy below. Its setting, New York City, is a character in itself, a world that vibrates and mutates under the eyes of a sixteen year old boy who is desperate to find somewhere safe. It is an unclear world, though, viewed as though through the peephole of a door with some things centred, magnified, given weight out of all proportion, and others only vague shapes on the side, lost and out of focus.

The story follows the journey of Lowboy, a boy who has run away from the hospital where he was being treated for schizophrenia. He begins with flight and destiny, twining the reader immediately into his worries and obsessions.

On November 11 Lowboy ran to catch a train, People were in his way but he was careful not to touch them… The doors had closed already but they opened when he kicked them. He couldn’t help but take that as a sign.

It is this unique and compelling voice, one that sees signs everywhere and manages to make the reader see them as well, that makes the confusion and pathos of schizophrenia approachable, if only just bearable. Readers feel as if they are looking at the same world that Lowboy is and that they, too, are involved in his flight from “Skull and Bones” and his search for his true calling.

His schizophrenic preoccupation with global warming, and his conviction that he can and must stop it, drive the narrative. In fact, the nearly mundane obsession with global warning makes Lowboy and his illness both compelling and approachable – it seems such a normal thing to be worried about, and it is only the fact that he worries without the brakes on, that he cannot stop placing the blame and possibility of salvation squarely on himself, that separates him from the rest of humanity.

Wray does a superb job of evoking New York without dwelling too much on lengthy descriptions.  Often, the only scenery is described in passing or in conversation. As with Lowboy’s history, the background is illuminated only when absolutely necessary, so that what is most real is whatever Lowboy is doing right then, not what happened before or what exists around him. What scenery is described in detail serves double duty as atmosphere and insight into Lowboy’s illness. The lovingly depicted trains and stations of the subway, the only place that Lowboy can focus and feel safe, are more real than the world outside, and the very solidness of the description makes them seem even more the safe ground that Lowboy needs to find.

There are moments, short moments, when everything seems to be “okay”, but the trains lure Lowboy back underground as his illness traps him back in the delusions.  Trying to convince a girl he loves to join him, Lowboy promises

“It’s all right Emily, he’d said. I’ll take you somewhere. I’m going to take you with me underground.”

Underground, where safety and deliverance lie. The trains are more than trains to Lowboy, and thus to the readers, and the delusions and drive he feels are real as well. They continue echoing down tunnels even after the book is read.

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