Shuck, a startling debut novel by Montreal’s Daniel Allen Cox, charts one young man’s path from homeless street hustler to porn superstar to aspiring writer. The story’s a lot more hopeful than it sounds.
    The title refers to shucking one’s pants. The pants in question belong to 22-year-old Jaeven Marshall, who learns very quickly how many men on the streets of New York will pay him to disrobe. It’s 1999, the city is caught up in Y2K angst, and Jaeven has given himself a year to get established as a published writer.
    His fortunes rise when he’s taken in by Derek Brathwaite, a celebrated avant-garde artist who generates his oeuvre by allowing his pet turtles to roam across a canvas with magic markers strapped onto their shells. From this home base, mail-outs of Jaeven’s primitive, Dostoevsky-inspired fiction make the rounds in earnest. When one literary journal characterizes his work as a “teenage revenge fantasy,” he steals every copy he can find and sets them all on fire.
    Using the intimate device of diary entries, Cox has created an entrancing protagonist in Jaeven, his forceful exuberance a believable blend of self-important insecurity and youthful bravado. Jaeven’s relationship with Derek quickly turns platonic and he becomes a fixture in the world of gay porn. Cox captures the young hustler’s new surroundings in lists that cast his existence as a whirl of poetic non-sequiturs, like “open-toe stilettos covered in mascara” or “hair-weave tumbleweed.”
    By the time New Year’s Eve rolls around, Jaeven’s dream of getting published is realized in a strange twist that, while unexpected, feels a bit tidy. All the same, Shuck is a distinctive coming-of-age story that poses thoughtful questions about the relationship between sex work and the creative process. A novel worth reading – for writers, whores, and everyone in between.