Carry Me Down - Softcover

Hyland, M J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000200738X ISBN 13: 9780002007382

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006

Synopsis

Eleven-year-old John Egan knows he has a special gift: he can tell when people are lying. Their untruths set his eyes stinging and his stomach heaving. John thinks that one day his gift will make him famous and guarantee entry into the the Guinness Book of World Records. Until then, he has to navigate his father's anger and his mother's abrupt and confusing changes between treating him like a little boy and a then like a man. When the family is forced from their rural cottage into the council-flat slums of Dublin, John discovers that the lies that make him sick are also shielding him from the truth that threatens to destroy his family.

    A portrait of a boy who is a contradiction between aching vulnerability and a menacing anger fuelled by pain, Carry Me Down is a raw, beautiful read, another intensely profound and powerful story from a writer to watch.

About this title

About the Author:

M. J. HYLAND was born in London in 1968 to Irish parents and spent her early childhood in Dublin. She studied law and English at the University of Melbourne and worked for several years as a lawyer. Her first novel, How the Light Gets In, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Eurasia Region) and for The Age Book of the Year in Australia and, in 2004, she was named Young Australian Writer of the Year.How the Light Gets In also took third place in the 2004 Barnes & Noble Discover Award for fiction. M. J. Hyland lives in London, England.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. A spare, piercing testimony to the bewilderment and resiliency of youth, Hyland's second novel (following How the Light Gets In) filters the adult world through the distressed lens of adolescence, which makes every change look like a test of survival. John Egan is an extremely tall 11-year-old boy living in the small town of Gorey, Ireland, with the moody triumvirate of his mother, father and grandmother. As he faces the trials of home and school life, John feels he has no place in the world, and his frustration fuels odd obsessions: with the Guinness Book of World Records, with physical human contact and with his "gift" for detecting lies. His parents, already sorting through their own uneasy relationship, puzzle over their only son with doctors and teachers, pushing John to a moment of crisis, which may prove his undoing. John's voice is singular and powerful throughout: "I wait anxiously for my turn, thinking that he'll soon discover me and know that I'm different. I've already decided that I'll tell him about my gift." By the subtle, satisfying dénouement, one is rooting for John's place in the Guinness book and saving a space for him among the year's memorable characters. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 000200738X
• ISBN 13: 9780002007382
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 344