LoveReading Says
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.
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Carry Me Down Synopsis
This Man Booker Prize finalist is "e;a fast-paced psychological drama . . . of the pain of lost innocence and the price of pursuing the truth"e; (People). John Egan is a misfit-"e;a twelve year old in the body of a grown man with the voice of a giant"e;-who diligently keeps a "e;log of lies."e; John's been able to detect lies for as long as he can remember, it's a source of power but also great consternation for a boy so young. With an obsession for the Guinness Book of Records, a keenly inquisitive mind, and a kind of faith, John remains hopeful despite the unfavorable cards life deals him.This is one year in a boy's life. On the cusp of adolescence-from his changing voice and body, through to his parents' difficult travails and the near collapse of his sanity-John is like a tuning fork sensitive to the vibrations within himself and the trouble that this creates for him and his family.Carry Me Down is "e;a spare, piercing testimony to the bewilderment and resiliency of youth"e; (Publishers Weekly, starred review)."e;Writing of the highest order."e;-J.M. Coetzee"e;Surreal, heartbreaking . . . John Egan [is] a character the reader is privileged to meet. Hyland's skill is commendable. Carry Me Down, in all its grossness and granular beauty, is a remarkable book."e;-San Francisco Chronicle"e;In taut, simple prose, Hyland meticulously captures the specific pains of growing up poor and lonely in Ireland and deftly anatomizes her judgmental protagonist's odd mixture of . . . little boy and grown lad."e;-Entertainment Weekly
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9780802191502 |
Publication date: |
7th October 2014 |
Author: |
M. J. Hyland |
Publisher: |
Grove Atlantic |
Format: |
Digital Product (Other) |
Primary Genre |
Young Adult Fiction
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Recommendations: |
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