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.
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