Reviews

Self-Portrait with Boy by Rachel Lyon

laurbgill's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

taradoesreading's review

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

jess_esa's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Like watching a slow car crash. The inevitably of what’s going to happen is palpable from the first page but you can’t look away. The characters who live in the apartment building are colourful and you really feel their absence when the inevitable does happen. You have to wonder at the life Lu would have had if she’d made a different choice. 

I need compensation for the rat scene which had me harrowed and somewhere between throwing up and crying.

The ghost and haunting scenes were a real surprise and I found them genuinely spooky at times. 

This book is definitely going to stay with me and I’m glad I finally got round to it! 

eileen_critchley's review

3.0

I really wanted to love this book and looked forward to reading it. I like what the author was trying to do and the idea behind the book, but feel there were too many little subplots going on. There was the main story of the photograph, there were the issues with living in an artist's loft under a slum lord, there was some attempts at 90s nostalgia, there was a friendship between the main character and a neighbor which she kept saying was her "closest friend" but it wasn't really developed, there was the main character's social awkwardness, there was her role as caretaker of her aging father, there was a sorta kinda ghost story, there was the plight of the starving artist, there was a relationship thrown in at the end.. and on and on. All of this came at the cost of none of these story lines becoming fully developed. The first part of the book really dragged me in as the main story was developing and then it all became somewhat tiresome for me.

alliereads_'s review against another edition

dark emotional tense

4.0

dillarhonda's review against another edition

Rachel Lyon’s debut novel, Self-Portrait with Boy is the sort of book that begins paragraphs with the phrase “I could tell you” followed by all the things the protagonist wants to share and summed up by the trite cliché, “…but I won’t tell you that.” It’s the sort of book that uses the art world and grime of 1990s DUMBO as a backdrop for an ethical investigation and then crams in a ghost story. It’s also a story about a queer woman discovering her love for women, though the lede is so buried on that one as to almost be an afterthought. Nevertheless, it is an entertaining book and a decent place to start for a writer clearly interested in big ideas. Its persistent question: How much does it hurt to profit off the pain of someone you love?

anneke_b's review against another edition

3.0

This was a strange book. I really disliked the main character, but somehow I really wanted to find out what would happen to her. Of course, nothing really good can come from a self portrait with a boy falling to death.

Different.

misslezlee's review against another edition

4.0

I’m no stranger to artist’s lofts and studios carved out of industrial spaces. My favorite one, the one most closely resembling the spaces in this novel was in Canary Wharf in the 1970s. A friend of a friend lived and worked there. When I visited, we could go up on the roof and enjoy spectacular views of the River Thames and the Tower of London. It was really seedy, run down and very dangerous at night. Nowadays, it is very swanky and extremely expensive to live there.

I got a little bit worried when the story started to take a supernatural turn, because I hadn’t expected that, but in the end it turned out to be an integral part of the plot

jhging's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

ewynn610's review against another edition

1