About the Author:
Prize-winning novelist M J Hyland was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the Encore prize for her second novel Carry Me Down, and has been appointed to the Centre for New Writing at University of Manchester as a Lecturer in Creative Writing. Carry Me Down, which charts a year in the profoundly troubled family life of twelve-year-old John Egan in early 1970s Ireland, was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her work has been acclaimed by the likes of Ali Smith, Hilary Mantel and J M Coetzee, who commented, 'This is fiction writing of the highest order.'
From Publishers Weekly:
Starred Review. A spare, piercing testimony to the bewilderment and resiliency of youth, Hyland's second novel (following How the Light Gets In) filters the adult world through the distressed lens of adolescence, which makes every change look like a test of survival. John Egan is an extremely tall 11-year-old boy living in the small town of Gorey, Ireland, with the moody triumvirate of his mother, father and grandmother. As he faces the trials of home and school life, John feels he has no place in the world, and his frustration fuels odd obsessions: with the Guinness Book of World Records, with physical human contact and with his "gift" for detecting lies. His parents, already sorting through their own uneasy relationship, puzzle over their only son with doctors and teachers, pushing John to a moment of crisis, which may prove his undoing. John's voice is singular and powerful throughout: "I wait anxiously for my turn, thinking that he'll soon discover me and know that I'm different. I've already decided that I'll tell him about my gift." By the subtle, satisfying dénouement, one is rooting for John's place in the Guinness book and saving a space for him among the year's memorable characters. (Mar.)
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