Excerpt from All That Is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The city reveals itself to him all the time, slinging its patterns across the most innocuous things. On sunny days, when shadows sit sharp and defined along the ground, he sees people following lines of shade, scuttling along near walls, slinking away from the glare of the light. Or waiting at traffic lights, everyone hunched together, inhabiting a small rectangle of sun-starved concrete. The things he knows, he knows from being alone amongst others. Walking, listening, watching. Last summer he sat on a step and looked at a queue that stretched out in front of a fishmonger's, everyone sweating and gossiping. And when it was too hot to talk, they stood in silence, breathing. Taking air in and pushing it out together, like they were all part of the same thing, some long, straggled creature. Sometimes he thinks that people stand in line just to be part of a line. To become part of the shapes that are created to fit them.

His mother spends her day working in a laundry and then comes home and washes and irons the neighbours' clothes. People call round at all hours with baskets of dirty garments. His mother didn't choose this. He knows she hates it. But someone has to do laundry, to keep clothes clean, keep them free from creases. Why not his mother? Everyone adapting to need.

And still they all want him to play Mozart and Schubert and he can't help asking himself: Where's the need in that? But he's too young to ask questions. This is what he's always told. So he asks them to himself and doesn't look for an answer. There are questions that float down to him from the mosaics. He has so many questions. He used to write them down but his mother found the sheets in his scrapbook and burned them. She said he had other things to concentrate on. She may as well have kicked him in the stomach. Still the questions keep bubbling in his brain. He straightens and asks himself: Why did anyone feel the need to put a mosaic of a parachute jumper on the ceiling of a Metro station? But it somehow feels more fascinating down here. The rush of clouds and sky has an intensity to it, in a place without fresh air, a chandeliered tunnel.

Mr. Leibniz would have plenty of questions. He'd treat Yevgeni like a broken artifact, a precious heirloom that had fallen off the mantelpiece. He wouldn't be concerned about the pain, at least not at first. He'd think of the weeks of rehearsals that would be missed, the competition schedule that would have to be rearranged. He'd place a hand on his forehead and bring his fingers together by running them across his tufted eyebrows. And then he'd look at Yevgeni with disappointment. Yevgeni hates that look.

People cascade down the escalators again, pour onto the platforms. Someone jostles his hand and Yevgeni lets out a stunted moan and then allows the surge to sweep him up, before finally coming to a stop at the platform's edge. He stands there and leans gently towards the track to catch a look at the incoming train as it rounds the curve, headlights bulldozing through the darkness.

He'll go to his aunt Maria. He's not sure at what point he made this decision, but he's standing here now and this is what he'll do.

Around him, people are tweaking their nostrils, chewing their nails, tugging at their earlobes. All of them looking into nothing.

The train pulls in, and as it stops the woman beside him bares her teeth to the steel panels of the doorframe. She's checking for lipstick marks. Yevgeni knows this because his mother does the same thing fifteen times a day, even if she's at home for the evening, even if she isn't wearing lipstick. She looks and asks him to check for stains and then unconsciously runs her tongue over the front row, because just in case. The doors open and the crowd surges and squeezes. Yevgeni hunches over, protecting his finger with his elbows and shoulders. He stands, waiting for the shunt when the train moves forward. He can't use his free hand to grasp one of the hanging straps, it would leave him too exposed, so he spreads his legs wide, lets them soak up the movement of the carriage.

Excerpted from All That Is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon. Copyright © 2014 by Darragh McKeon. Excerpted by permission of Harper Perennial. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.