01 Oct / Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon [in Library Journal]
“I’ll tell you how it started,” Rachel Lyon’s extraordinary debut promises. “With a simple, tragic accident … and a photograph.” A boy is dead after tumbling off the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building. His descent is unintentionally caught on film by the artist living in the loft below. The tragedy transforms Self-Portrait #400 into spectacular, unforgettable, unforgivable art.
Lu is the epitome of the hungry young New York artist, working multiple dead-end jobs for minimal sustenance, sinking all available resources to the creation of her oeuvre. As the building residents rally around the shocked, grieving parents, Lu finds herself achingly drawn to mourning mother Kate. Lu’s need for intimate friendship and her obsession with public validation of her work (not to mention a paycheck) cannot possibly coexist; her decision regarding the fate of her masterpiece photograph will understandably have irrevocable consequences.
Julia Whelan keeps the tension palpable through the almost 10 hours of heightened narration, enhancing Lyon’s already raw, searing story. Savvy readers of incandescent debuts involving young children – think Samantha Schweblin’s Fever Dream, Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children, Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere – will also find hauntingly satisfying resonance here.
Review: “Audio,” Library Journal, September 15, 2018
Readers: Adult
Published: 2018