Carry Me Down [Paperback]

"This is writing of the highest order." This is how JM Coetzee describes Carry Me Down. So, it is with high expectations that I started reading M.J. Hyland's latest offering - and at the end of the book I emerged astonished, puzzled, bewildered, and deeply disturbed.

Few pages into the book, and you wonder if this is another coming-of-age offering similar to David Mitchell's latest offering; the somewhat simple, yet brilliantly devious prose reminded me of Ali Smith's brilliant novel, the Accidental. However, continue reading, and you realise that this is no ordinary tale. It is meant to haunt the reader long after he or she finishes reading it.

Narrated by the almost 12-year old boy, John Egan, Carry Me Down offers little but the complicated lad's view of the story. He, his beautiful mother and his jobless father all live with John's paternal grandmother at her place in Gorey, Ireland. Much of the second half of the book takes place in Dublin, where the family moves after a nasty spat between John's father and his grandmother.

However, the theme of the story lies in what the boy claims is his extraordinary ability to "detect lies." The lazy reader who likes to have an informed opinion by just reading the jacket of the book might assume that the boy indeed does have a gift. But, Hyland offers little in the way, despite the "apparent" (and I stress the word apparent) experimental successes John demonstrates - particularly, when it comes to revealing his father's extramarital affair, although I'm not convinced, if indeed that is the case.

In any event, while Hyland delicately entagles John's complicated personality, several more disturbing events ensue, and the reader can be forgiven for sympathising with the disturbed, unusually tall adolescent with homosexual feelings (although this, thankfully, was paid only the attention that was due, without providing channels for the tabloids to exploit the angle). Although I would be surprised if a reader emerged sympathising with John at the end.

This is an intensely emotional psychological drama, which when given the benefit of imaginative interpretations, can be as real as your eyes reading this review, or as unreal as a graphic dream in which you dream of reading this review. Either way, you'd have a remarkable book by a remarkably talented writer.

As I continue along the theme of reading novels told from the point of view of a child narrator, I found recommendations of M. J. Hyland's Carry Me Down. This is a story about John, a lonely eleven year old child who becomes obsessed with the Guinness Book of Records, and who, inspired by the tremendous and bizarre feats of strangers, and following a particularly gruesome event (which I'll say no more) convinces himself he has a gift for lie detection. He is, he thinks, a human lie detector. However, far from being a quirky tale portraying the whims and romanticism of young adolescents imagining their own superpowers, M. J. Hyland's narrative is disturbing and mentally scarring; and powerful enough to haunt you when you're reading it, when you're not reading it, and long after you have read it.

The opening scene unfolds with John, his `Ma', and his `Da' all reading at the kitchen table. From this very simple setting, and with minimal character interaction, we can immediately tell that something is very wrong with this family. There's no authorial telling, however, no pointing out of human failings, faults, addictions, perversions. Instead, in this novel it's all show: as we journey through dialogue, actions, interests and setting it becomes apparent that this story is trying to tell us something important about parenting, about childhood, about the psychology of growing up and the loneliness it brings. I was compelled by the novel, by John and by his very sad and emotionally starved existence.

His parents' absorption by their own problems is a major cause of this, and while it becomes very easy to feel abhorrence for the neglect they're inflicting on their son, it is also unsettlingly easy to contextualize it with parenting in general. There are hints of violence, (a slap here and there from a father with a bad temper - something not altogether unheard of in the '70s) some harsh criticism, scant attention to John's neediness, and prolonged and heartbreaking periods of emotional neglect. The latter caused by a mistake a lot of parents are guilty of; that is, paying too much attention to their own lives at the expense of their child's.

There are some points mid-way through the novel where the portrayal of John's mental state becomes almost unbearable to read. When he pees his pants in front of his school class, for example. This scene, although thoroughly compelling, almost makes us want to attack the author: `What are you doing to him!' We might shout. `Hasn't this poor kid been through enough?' But, for the author's polemic John hasn't suffered enough, as his emotional and physical isolation increases till he slides into the pit of despair for most of the remaining novel. Thankfully, though, just at a time when it seems as though there is no hope, the most disturbing culmination of his damaged mind paradoxically provides hope and optimism, and we leave the novel feeling as though good might actually come of all the bad.

It is very easy to see why Carry Me Down was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. M.J. Hyland is clearly gifted at maintaining consistency of voice, of tone; brilliant at the old and widely valued skill of showing not telling, and thoroughly convincing in her ability to shape a narrative from the point of view of a child. And although this compelling novel is a depressing read full of hopelessness, the fact that I continued reading, the fact that I wanted to continue reading and the fact that I read it in two days, tells you all you need to know about its incredible lure. A brilliant work of art.

The Booker 2006 seemed to include a couple of books on each of several themes. James Robertson's The Testament of Gideon Mack and Andrew O Hagan's Be Near Me both dealt with ministers who are ultimately disgraced and ostracised by their communities. Similarly, both David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and M.J.Hyland's Carry Me Down are tales of the troubled growing up of boys.

This is pretty much all they have in common, though. While Mitchell's book seemed conventional when compared to his earlier work, its chronological narrative structure allowed the reader to fall head-first into the protagonist's life. Hyand's novel is altogether more unsettling and fractured. It follows a period of time in the life of eleven year-old John Egan, an awkwardly tall and introverted only child who starts the book off living with his parents in his paternal grandmother's house in Gorey, Co. Wexford. Ostensibly, events involve his schooldays and his family's move to Dublin, but the main subject of the story is not only external events but also the internal workings of John's mind and his sometimes fraught relationship with each of his parents and with his grandmother. John is an obsessive child with a penchant for repeatedly reading successive copies of the Guinness Book of Records. He is determined to make himself famous by exploiting what he sees as his gift for detecting lies. The irony is that his original intention of purifying his family life by exposing lies ends up leading to strife.

Hyland evokes well the introversion of an only child and the sometimes suffocating atmosphere in his home. The lightning quick mood changes that can lead to stressed parents snapping or lashing out verbally, and that plunge children into bewilderment and make them feel rejected, are deftly described. There is a vivid and disturbing account of a bully in John's school in Gorey and the tale of what happens to his only friendship is moving. Yet for all his vulnerability, John is no saint - although he wishes his classmates would show a little more tolerance and his parents would only speak the truth, he himself is repulsed by his grandmother's disgusting eating habits and is not averse to fibbing when it suits him.

Carry Me Down is a strange book. Much of it feels disjointed - numerous separate domestic incidents that don't coalesce to form a cohesive story. Many of these incidents themselves are trivial in the extreme. Yet perhaps this is the intention - the overriding sensation on reading this book is one of unease. The vile life led by empoverished Dubliners living in towerblocks in the early seventies leaks out of every page, every small domestic occurrence. And more tumultous events occur too, almost with the inevitability of a train speeding inexorably along a track. The whole is a sometimes disspiriting but always fascinating semi-voyeuristic peek into the life of an ordinary disadvantaged family and an insight into the circumstances that can trigger catastrophe. The reader is left wondering at the end whether John Egan achieves happiness or not, and the fact that we care is testament to the reality of the portrayal of this lonely boy.

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