Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006.
This review is provided by bookgroup.info.
We chose this book at our last meeting and I picked it up when my bookgroup colleagues had gone intending to read a few pages before I went to sleep. I finally put it down at 3am. Such is the power of the writing in this second novel by M J Hyland.
The story concerns an eleven-year-old boy, John Egan, (don’t be put off as I was initially, it’s not jumping on the Curious Incident bandwagon) who is too tall for his age and as fragile as a piece of glass. He relates a year of his life in which the family moves from the relative comfort of his granny’s house in rural Wexford, to a squalid high-rise in Dublin.
This is a boy with only one real friend, and too much in the company of adults. The relationship between John, his parents and his grandmother is uneasy. John feels disconnected but doesn’t understand why. His out of work father, a “could’ve been†academic procrastinates about entering university life, forcing the family to live with his mother, a mean-spirited woman who holds financial power over the family.
His mother is on the edge, concerned about her strange son and wayward husband. When they fall out the move to Dublin tips her over. John suffers terribly at this time. He’s lost his only friend, his mother is depressed and on the brink of a breakdown and his father is in and out of work, gambling and consorting with prostitutes.
The shocking denouement jolts the family into realising that their son needs help and we can only hope that they find redemption.
M J Hyland really gets into the head of this boy. Written in spare, flattened prose, it is a sensory tour de force.
Ireland, 1971, John Egan is a misfit, 'a twelve year old in the body of a grown man with the voice of a giant who insists on the ridiculous truth'. With an obsession for the Guinness Book of Records and faith in his ability to detect when adults are lying, John remains hopeful despite the unfortunate cards life deals him. During one year in John's life, from his voice breaking, through the breaking-up of his home life, to the near collapse of his sanity, we witness the gradual unsticking of John's mind, and the trouble that creates for him and his family.
| Primary Genre | Young Adult Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
Ireland, 1971, John Egan is a misfit, 'a twelve year old in the body of a grown man with the voice of a giant who insists on the ridiculous truth'. With an obsession for the Guinness Book of Records and faith in his ability to detect when adults are lying, John remains hopeful despite the unfortunate cards life deals him.
Carry Me Down features in the following genres: Young Adult Fiction, eBooks of the Month, Children’s, Teenage and Educational, Recommendations
Paperback, Ebook. £9.89, down from the £10.99 cover price. In Stock.
Carry Me Down was written by M. J. Hyland and published by Canongate an imprint of Canongate Books
Carry Me Down has 326 pages
£9.89, reduced from £10.99. In Stock.
