Max Porter Turns the Trauma Plot on Its Head

The protagonist of Max Porter’s Shy is Shy, a teenage boy given to wild bursts of rage. He has been excluded from the mainstream school system due to a long and sustained pattern of delinquency and now resides at the Last Chance school. Last Chance is an experimental teaching facility and therapy program for troubled boys, situated in a rickety and possibly haunted countryside mansion. Scraps of documentary narration suggest it takes a less disciplinarian approach to antisocial behavior than tends to be politically popular and that this may be one reason it is currently threatened with closure. Shy is not taking this development well at all.