Throughout, the reader repeatedly chews on delicious chunks of gritty prose, so redolent of growing up in the 90s that you can practically smell the static of a box TV. Short and bitter-sweet, the book is a psychological spewing of a troubled teen’s brain, from the “Reebok rucksack he’s had forever” which stays permanently glued to his back, to the “Hard work, getting harder, hacking through voices”. We never learn what got him there, only whispers of "the lighter fluid incident" and vexing flashbacks to Shy’s youth, littered with misbehaviour and feeling misunderstood. The lyrics of DJ Randall, Congo Natty and the likes are scattered amongst foggy memories of his childhood, troubled dreams of the girl “who mutters in the walls between his room”, and his current experiences at Last Chance, “a school for badly behaved boys in the middle of bumble f*** no where”. We follow the eponymous Shy, a teen of the 90s, whose Walkman-played drum-and-bass is his only solace from the relentless pressures of everyday life.
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