Customer Reviews

Carry Me Down

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Carry Me Down leaves you with a lump in the throat after you've closed the cover. It's such an authentic portrait of what it is to be a lonely adolescent who's an awkward misfit, though thankfully not every lonely adolescent tries to smother his mother.

The focus of this book is on the brutality of childhood, as well as the huge impact parents play in forming the psyches of their children. Though not an abused child per se, John Egan is raised by somewhat unstable parents who don't always provide him with the emotional and financial stability he so desperately needs. He becomes a compulsive liar who's convinced he has a preternatural ability to detect lies in others, and as such he's somewhat an unreliable narrator. The reader can read between the lines and get a good general idea of the truth, by knowing the reactions of the other characters, so the occasional delusions of John are easily seen through. He is a liar, but not a sophisticated one. There's a lot of innocence in him, through it all, and this is what gets our sympathy. He's a child who needs a lot of love and who gets precious little, and that's what breaks the reader's heart more than anything.

After finishing this book last evening I cannot get it out of my head. It's dark and sometimes depressing, but in the end redemptive. No wonder the Booker committee chose it. It illustrates a very good instinct for picking out another up-and-comer to watch.

I expect Hyland may not have the visibility to actually win the prize, but this is one of the most heart-rending books I've read in a while, and it definitely deserves making the Longlist. It's so worth making the effort to fit this one into your reading schedule.

After I had read the first 20 or so pages of this book, I thought I might have to put it down and not read the rest. There is a scene of such quiet violence inside an otherwise placid domestic setting that I could not bear to read it. But I did continue, at first through slightly squinting eyes (not to be caught off-guard again), and quickly found that I couldn't put the book down. One might say that 'nothing happens' (as I've read earlier here), but I'd argue that everything happens. We watch as the author carefully and quietly dessimates an entire personality before our eyes. She never releases the tension, from scene to scene (I had much trouble sleeping at night after reading this -- a warning to other bedtime readers), and I couldn't stop turning the pages. I did have a little trouble with some of her characters who are slipped in but never developed: the teacher, Mr. Roche, is a complete mystery to me (what did he want with John? What was that all about?). The gang who threatens John disappears as if they never existed, despite the fact that he does not complete the task they set for him. The author always comes back to this troubled triumverate of a family (calling them dysfunctional does not even begin to describe the destructive forces inside them). I wish I knew someone who's read the book so that we can analyze it to death. The parents seem to love the boy genuinely, and yet they also seem to fear him, and to infantalize him. The broken aspects of their marriage, and the psychological violence that springs from it, has a profound affect on the boy which they seem never to realize (until, perhaps, the end, and even then it's hard to tell if they really do see, or if they've made a pact to ignore it). The reader watches the boy's personality slowly break, but it's done with such fierce tenderness -- the contradictions in this writing are, I think, profound. And to call the ending 'redemptive' is, to me, inaccurate. I felt relief to find them back in the place where they began, and yet the dysfunctions remain. One wonders who John Egan will grow up to be; there is no real healing here, only an attempt to be loved again. That paradox kept me awake late into the night after I finished this. A tour de force, I think, despite some quibbling flaws.

The narrator of this story, John Egan, an 11-year-old Irish schoolboy, wants to get into the Guinness Book of Records as a human lie-detector. An only child, clever but thank goodness not precociously so, he tries to make sense of the world around him, but sees only its inconsistencies. Things are changing too fast: his body undergoes an unexpected growth spurt, his voice begins to change, he encounters problems at school, and some trouble erupts between his out-of-work father and long-suffering mother. The one thing he does know is when he is being lied to, and before long he has begun lying himself in self-defence. Almost imperceptibly at first, his life begins to spiral downwards, reaching a climax towards the end which makes everybody around him stop and take stock. Paradoxically, the trigger for this near-disaster is not another lie, but John's insistence on the truth; one of the most interesting aspects of Hyland's writing is her ability to see the shadings in what others might regard as moral absolutes.

A summary of the story might make it appear relentlessly grim, but not so. Despite the rural Irish setting circa 1969, this is no piece of Celtic Gothic, but something that might be written of families anywhere. John is a sympathetic character, often funny, and surprisingly resilient. For most of the book, the story seems like some kind of preadolescent adventure. The climax, when it comes, takes you by surprise, although you can recognize the earlier hints if you think back. Also, Hyland does not leave the reader with an entirely bleak ending; there is hope around the corner. But (partly from personal experience) I do feel that the ending is a little simplistic; the implied upward trajectory is likely to be neither short nor easy. Nor entirely one-sided; the emphasis on the troubled child hides the fact that his father may be an even more deeply disturbed character, and this is something that is neither fully explored nor satisfactorily resolved.

But for all its troubling elements, CARRY ME DOWN also contains great warmth which I think will last long after the book has been returned to its shelf.

Eleven-year-old John Egan is tall and deep-voiced for his age, straightaway making other people -- his parents, his teachers, a doctor --think he needs help, that he should feel out of place. But he's out of place in ways that have more to do with his family's financial circumstances than his physique. Certain -- delusorily so -- that he can do something so great he will one day be mentioned in the Guiness Book of World Records, John figures out that his great talent is detecting lies: his ears grow hot, other physical things happen, he just knows what's true and what's not.

Carry Me Down is sad but charming, and because John is so loveable and fascinating, I enjoyed this book tremendously. At times it was funny. Once or twice I cried. Highly recommended.

In M. J. Hyland's latest novel a boy whose large size already casts him as being different, strives to set himself apart officially, by making it into his favorite book, the Guiness Book of World Records. John Egan believes he can do this by being the world's only human lie-detector. In the background, his family struggles with his father's choice to pursue his dream rather than keep a steady job and John suffers humiliation from his peers after he wets himself in class. Hyland's writing is clear and lovely; her characters, unforgettable and charming.

This is the story of a normal childhood gone astray by a series of events. The kid, John loses his only friend and the family goes through a crisis due to which they move from a previous house to another one. Things get worse here. It shows how things can be difficult with children given excessive confidence from adults. Growing up in 1970s Ireland adds an additional complexity in already complicated story. The lack of opportunity in Ireland adds to the damage done by misunderstanding and lack of affection on the boy. This is an outstanding character study. Like other stories, this is narrative in first person. While the story has powerful themes, I feel that these could have been developed further. While the novel is enthralling and painful, it also seems meandering in the end. Overall, a highly commendable book that deserves some praise.

I purchased this book on a whim and couldn't be happier that I did. This is an absolutely wonderful book. The character of John Egen seemed very real to me and I felt for him.

I found the writing to be wonderful and the story flowed flawlessly. I read another review in which the reviewer wondered why more was not done with the gang threat that John receives. A typical book would have taken this "plot point" and made this the story. This is not a typical book. I highly recommend CARRY ME DOWN and will definitely check out the authors other books.

I didn't care for this book at all. The best thing I can say about it is that it held my interest just enough for me to keep reading it. And that was for the simple fact of nothing much happened in the entire book and I kept waiting for SOMETHING to happen. I expected some earth shattering climax but there was nothing even close. The book just ends, period. I was very disappointed. I probably won't bother with another of M.J. Hyland's books. I read another that was only marginally better than this.

Hyland does a masterful job of inhabiting the mind of this novel's 11 year old protagonist. Her prose, though unadorned, is highly evocative. To read this novel is to remember what it felt like not to understand the ways of parents and grown-ups and the world outside one's door. Well deserving of it's Booker nomination.

Now this really is something: ask an author and they'll tell you, if they're honest enough, that a first person, present tense narrator is one of the most difficult tricks an a writer can attempt. And here, MJ Hyland manages it flawlessy. Making masterly use of what might seem the restrictions of the style, Hyland creates an intensely close, utterly convincing portrait of an awkward, at times wilfully deluded, heartbreaking thirteen year old boy convinced he's been gifted with an uncanny ability to detect lies. Like all truly great works of fiction, it creates whole worlds - in this case, both the outer world of Dublin, and the odd inner world of John Egan. Both convince utterly. Somehow, though rightly shortlisted, Carry Me Down didn't come away with the Booker Prize. That, to be honest, is the Booker's loss - honouring Carry Me Down would have given the prize a much-needed credibility boost. Still, Carry Me Down is none the worse for that - a true classic, this book will be read and reread by lovers of great literature for years to come.

No one who makes John Egan's acquaintance will ever forget him.