Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good indeed., 9 Aug 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
The first half of this book is fantastic. You meet patrick, fleeing from a broken relationship to a boarding house by the sea. He gets to know the town, his fellow boarders and his new job. And very subtly, you start to see him become increasingly unhinged. or perhaps you just notice that he is just not quite right. Out of kilter with the world around him. It's beautifully done, and completely compelling.
Then the "chilling event" described on the cover happens (although, as another reviewer points out, why they don't just tell you what happens is beyond me) and the second half is very different. but as good.
It's a great study of a man and of men. And of a man who is always just not quite in tune with the world. Missing things and people. The first half is about him, and the second half more about the men he's surrounded by (he goes to prison).
The style is understated but very urgent. Usually present tense annoys me, but here I stopped noticing after a few pages.
very good indeed.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Intense and mesmerising but ulitmately depressing, 18 Jul 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
There are some people who will identify very strongly with Patrick Oxtoby. He is one of life's loners, a young man almost completely unable to engage with society whose own life falls apart in a undramatic but devastatingly bad way. Such is his lack of ability to communicate that he falls into the inevitable trap of relying on his own imagination to try and make sense of what other people might be thinking of him. This leads his to carry out a sad and stupid act which sends him from being imprisoned in his own mind to being physically incarcerated. Ironically, it is within these confines that he finally finds it possible to acheive empathy and even some sense of love for his fellow human beings.
This is not a joyful novel in any sense and whilst it is a compelling read it is not always comfortable. Sometimes you almost want to shout at the pages "Stop it!" or "Get a grip!"; such are the depressingly inevitable outcomes of some of the ways in which Patrick feebly tries to interact with other people. The truth is there is something of Patrick in many 21st Century men and it's not a good feeling to recognise it. How Maria Hyland has found her way inside the mind of this man is a bit of a mystery.
Is it a good book? Well, not in the sense that it was a "good read" - at times these was that same sense of discomfort that books like Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love" gives. But it is a superb piece of imaginative writing which does give the feeling that you have experienced something real and powerful as a result of reading it.
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15 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Food for thought, 26 Jun 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
MJ Hyland has an unusual fondness for violent misfits. In her excellent novel Carry Me Down (2006), her pubescent protagonist John Egan learns the hard way that covering mummy's face with a pillow won't necessarily make her any happier. Now, in This Is How, Hyland presents the story of Patrick Oxtoby, a down-and-out mechanic in a seaside town who turns out to be a kind of Raskolnikov tribute act. In a drunken rage, poor anger-prone Patrick learns the hard way that clobbering someone with a wrench can have serious consequences.
The publisher seems oddly reluctant to tell you that this is a book about the aftermath of a violent crime, referring only to Patrick's "tragic undoing" and supplying a pretty little cover with a man and a dog. In reality, this misleadingly advertised novel is a compelling and macabre journey to the dark side of human existence.
Like Carry Me Down, This Is How is told through sparse, present-tense, first-person narration that rattles along at a crackling pace, capturing Patrick's shock and vulnerability as events spiral rapidly beyond his control. The result is a gripping, readable and surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of a memorable antihero.
Patrick protests his innocence on the grounds that he never "intended" to do anything wrong. "My mind played hardly any part," he tell us, "but my body acted and, as far as the law is concerned, my body may as well be all that I am". Is there some truth in this "don't blame me!" determinism? This is the central issue the novel explores.
Personally, I'm not convinced. Anger, loneliness, loss of control, ignorance, drunkenness... these are causes of violence, but not excuses. We don't have to let our irrational bloodlust get the better of us. When we do, we're responsible for what results. It's left to the reader to decide whether Patrick deserves to be held accountable for his horrific deed. If you read it let me know what you think.
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