It's a frightening time to be a young man

Writer Max Porter talks to HANNAH STEPHENSON about fatherhood, family, and snubbing social media

- HANNAH STEPHENSON

THERE is much dark material in award-winning writer Max Porter's latest novel, Shy, which explores the thoughts of a troubled teenager and his raft of emotions, anger, raging hormones and violent outbursts.

Meeting Max today, he lists a catalogue of his own worries about the challenges facing young people inequality, Tory Britain, the NHS in crisis, cost-of-living crisis, diminished global opportunities post Brexit, climate change and that's just for starters.

"If we accept that it's always been quite hard to get out of bed when you're 16 years old, then it's really hard to get out of bed now. I'm full of sympathy for that.

"It's a frightening time to be a young man and a compassionate society should be there to support, encourage and nurture young people and there are many ways in which our current society hasn't done that and is failing them."

It seems a somewhat depressing start to an interview, yet Max is an upbeat, talkative guy who sympathises with his seemingly difficult eponymous anti-hero and peppers this unusual novella with wit and poetic asides.

The book is set in 1995 as Shy escapes Last Chance, a home for "very disturbed young men", carrying a rucksack full of rocks.

It explores his stream of consciousness, voices in the troubled teenager's head, rage, shame, childhood memories, violent outbursts, therapy sessions and bad decisions that brought him to Last Chance, all to a drum and bass soundtrack on his Walkman.

Max listened to 90s drum and bass on his headphones while writing it to set the tempo, he recalls.

The Last Chance setting was sparked when he and his family came upon an old manor house during a walk in the woods near his home in Bath.

"I Googled it and found out it had once been an experimental school for badly behaved boys. So I thought, I'm going to make a boy up and put him in it."