Shy, Max Porter

August 2026

A few hours in the life of an angsty teenage boy is not the sort of book I would usually go for, but I chose it for that reason.

I went through most of the book with a kind of blankness, masking a mixture of curiosity, bemusement, amusement, worry and fear. Troubled teenage boy obsessed with drum and bass I was not, no. I was a very good teenage girl, obsessed with Joanna Newsom. Though, of course, opposites are often not so different as they seem, and we all contain multitudes. Sometimes I wish I'd lived out that other part of myself a bit more.

I was surprised to be crying my eyes out at the end, but a line caught me off guard, and then the ending did too, so freeing and affirming and cathartic. Porter's writing is evocative and completely unpretentious. It works well for the subject matter. A good read.

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Fuck's sake, says Shy, laughing at his own weird delirium.

Maybe we're Norns, Shy. Remember? The weird sisters?

Shivering uncontrollably.

Maybe we're spies from the twenty-first century saying
Hold on, young'un, you're going to want to see this.
There's incredible music coming.