Carry Me Down ~ M J Hyland

This was a novel that I had picked up off the library shelf many times then put it back because I’d not heard of MJ Hyland.

Then I played a website game by Penguin Books and saw that one of the listed books was How the Light Gets In by MJ Hyland.  This sparked my interest.  Finally, I downloaded it on Media Overdrive and found I couldn’t put it down.

Carry me Down is an extremely compelling story.  It is narrated by a boy called John Egan who is Irish, 11 years old (going on 12) but with the body and voice of a man.  John has many issues and these are cleverly exposed throughout the storyline by showing us his lack of emotion and dis-associative behaviours.

John is very sensitive to reading the emotions of those close to him however, which leads him to recognise when they are lying to him.  He gets very angry when he spots a lie, yet through the story he himself tells many.

Convinced that he is a human lie detector he keeps a book he calls the ‘Gol of Seil’ (Log of Lies) and writes to the Guinness Book of Records requesting a chance to prove his talents.

As family life begins to disintegrate around him, John finds himself more alone than ever.  His father is unreliable and his mother has begun to distance herself from her son.  He has no-one to rely on or trust.

There are some very sinister overtones with human understones here, and you wonder ‘how will it end?’. Especially when John tries to smother his mother with a pillow in order to help her sleep!  We find out that John is to enter six months of therapy with a Psychiatrist but that’s it.  The ending was a great disappointment to an extremely vivid characterisation of a boy you won’t forget in a hurry.

The Trial ~ Franz Kafka

This is a nightmare world, where a 30 year old man, Josef K. is arrested and put on trial for a crime of which he is oblivious, his is not told what the charges are, and he has no idea who brought the charges against him.

Free to carry on with his life, but with the threat of the imminent trial, K. seeks help from a gravely ill lawyer and is given advice on the legal system by a painter known as Titorelli. 

K. is a senior bank clerk, but he finds that as he spends more time trying to get helpfor his case, his co-workers are beginning to undermine him.

Towards the end of the story he is duped into going to a cathedral where a priest who is part of the prison system has been waiting for him.  There they discuss the faceless/nameless system and the Priest tells a parable about the law, which was published on it’s own as ‘Before the Law’.

K. comes to a sad end, but as Kafka died before completing the novel who knows what the true ending would have been?

Bizarre and haunting.  I really liked it.

Thank You, Jeeves! ~ P G Wodehouse

Another delightful story where Bertie Wilberforce Wooster finds himself in a precarious situation and is in need of being bailed out by his valet Jeeves.

In this story Jeeves has actually left Bertie for employment elsewhere as he sick of Berties incessant playing of the banjolele.  This however does not prevent his expertise from being utilised – Jeeves is hired by the landlord of the cottage that Bertie has moved into after complaints about his playing from his city neighbours.    

Unfortunately if you add a drunken new Valet, a lovesick American heiress and some roaming minstrels into the mix - Berties bound to get into trouble!

This is laugh out loud stuff and I loved it.