Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Of the highest order..., 3 Oct 2006
"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.
|
|
|
23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best of the 2006 booker bunch, 3 Sep 2006
This novel is long-listed for the 2006 Booker and is the best of the bunch that I've read so far. The prose is clean and sharp and the suspense and atmosphere that builds up is awful (meaning great).
Comparisons t other child narrators like that in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time or David Mitchell's latest rather miss the point; this is a book about the consequences of a kind of extreme puritanism and perfectionism - the desire to make the world in the way you want it and the inabiity to fully realise that other people have lives that are outside your ken.
However, like the best child narrators, John Egan (the 12 year old central character) does evoke strong felings of sympathy (despite him being a little creepy)and sees the world with an off-kilter vision that has not yet been dulled by adulthood.
A great read.; highly recommended.
|
|
|
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Is john so eccentric or mad??, 21 Oct 2006
This novel held me in thrall for all its pages. These passed too quickly, except for the excruciating pain of the move to the project slum in Dublin, with its unforgettable stench and filth- particularly the scenes around the elevator and the gang bullying.These were so vivid and real that each second dragged by painfully.I found John totally believable and not nearly as weird or eccentric as others have. I find John's reactions to his world a credible and deeply moving reaction to the adults that stifle his creativity and his peers that reject him when he behaves differently to the norm- or simply because he matures early and is a target for bullying and derision. His hopes to make his mark in the world and achieve something beyond the moribund pretensions of his father fuels an obsessive need to excel and be noticed.This is so common a need in teenagers as to be a cliche.John's methods may be unusual but his motivation is a deeply innate part of the individuation process essential but so painful during adolescence.That he chooses lie detection as his "gift" perfectly reflects the role he takes in the family- as the go between from his mother's sensual and imaginative life and his father's closed intellectualism and his granny's cloying possessiveness.John understands his purpose in life is to reveal the truth- like all art at its highest levels. Taking on this role is a potential minefield, and explosions abound.
John's mother's lively encouragement of his imagination and creativity, reflecting her own love of fantasy and theatre, add to this explosive mix, and his sensual attachment to her is poignantly expressed , as are his other emerging sexual feelings.The betrayal of Brendan is keenly observed by Hyland, and the claustraphobic intensity of the shed scene was unforgettable.Kate makes for a villain of operatic proportions.
Tragically, just as Mr Roche- a potentially redemptive and inspirational force for good in John's life arrives on the scene, his father's failure to provide any stability for his family ruptures John's hopes of finding acceptance and self esteem through the new school experiences.The later appearance of a more subdued and flattened Mr Roche was disturbing- a teasing inclusion, perhaps left a little too loose ended....No ideal saviour was to be provided in this novel, all are compromised by the world that refuses acceptance to the illfitting pegs...
Life in Dublin is a nightmare of terrifying proportions.John's earlier life appears as a paradise by comparison. Hyland paints this ghoulish world of the ugly ordinariness of poverty and ignorance unflinchingly. How a boy of John's sensitivity survives at all is surprising. His mother almost capitulates to the horrors and his father is dragged into the dark meaninglessness all too easily.While John's actions to save/destroy his mother in her depressed despair are shocking, the ultimate result saves the whole family.Like a bushfire that regenerates, John's desperate act transforms his life and his parents'.By at last realising the catastrophic damage their actions have reeked on John's mind, they burst into positive action to save John's future- and their own. One can only hope that Hyland is not overly optimistic about John's future, unfairly cast as he is as the guilty party .After so much damage has been done,one hopes his resiliance and intelligence will win through.The ending promises hope and redemption- a brave move in a world that so often preaches only doom and hopelessness.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by M.J. Hyland
by M.J. Hyland
by Edward St Aubyn
by Hisham Matar
by Kate Grenville
