For entertainment purposes only, here's a rant/review I posted on my blog in 2010:Lately, I've found myself fighting boredom with boredom. It's sad and infuriating, but reading boring, badly-written, tedious books comes much easier to me these days than anything even bordering on worthwhile or quality or any of those things I appreciate in literature.My local library is a cottage the size of a small garage and seems to cater mainly chick-lit for stereotypical housewives, so I have to rummage the shelves very carefully, first of all to find something readable and secondly to learn to define the fuzzy border between entertaining and exasperating. Apart from the obvious chick-lit or possibly hen-light, there's the fictional equivalent of the Torey Hayden* genre - boo hoo my/his/hers childhood sucked and isn't it just touching how it looks seen through the innocent eyes of a child? and this is sometimes near-indiscernible with the occasional decently-written account of a bad childhood.Anyway, whatever. What I was coming to is that I'm not quite skilled enough at telling the difference yet, as proved by my very recent mistake of borrowing Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland - I expected dark corners and tragic mystery, but what I got was endless pages of what the narrator had to eat and how he felt about urine and what Mammy said then, wash, rinse, repeat, etcetera. (without the washing and rinsing in the middle, really.) I'm not quite sure where all the alleged enthrallingness and unputdownability (whoever invented the word "unputdownable" deserves to go back to hell - and whoever decided to include it in two of the neatly-clipped praising citations on the backside of one single book can follow them) is supposed to come in, and usually I'm good at seeing things from the point of view of the depressingly tasteless, so I don't really know what to think of anyone at the moment. Anyway, what I was coming to is that looking back, I should have known. I should have paid a closer look to the front cover.You see, following a not-terrible name and non-offputting back-cover blurb, picked from the midst of spot-the-difference puzzles of This And That Clubs and Mrs So And So's Unexciting Domestic Tormentses, this cover looks alright. But maybe if I had approached it in a different environment, I would have noticed the obvious signs: the single enhanced colour in an otherwise monochrome picture, the frown that seems to hint that either wailing or sulking is to be expected, the... well, that's it, really, but a list with two things looks terrible so I shall pretend to have been thinking of a third thing anyway despite being in possession of a perfectly usable backspace button. ANYWAY. Had I not been facing the desperate need for something to deserve to be associated with my brand-new library card, I perhaps would have realized that this was screaming "troubled youth!!!" a bit too loudly.Nevertheless, despite the completeness and utterness of the tediousness and depressiveness, I am left quite confused as to the relationship of pity-beggaring and constant references to urine.(*2014 note: I have never actually read or even opened a single Torey Hayden book. I don't know why I was so obsessed with hating her in my late teenage years. (Not that I still don't assume those books to be bad.))
Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland.I was referred to M.J. Hyland, an author I hadn't previously heard of, by the algorithm at gnooks.com. I found this book quite disturbing when I read it, so much so that I felt I needed some distance before I could articulate my thoughts about it in a review.A couple of months later, I think I have a better understanding of why I found the book so disturbing. Some basic information about the book: it's a first-person account, in the voice of 12-year old John Egan, a precocious only child, of a difficult year in the life of his family. Without giving away too much of the plot, his unemployed father alienates John’s (maternal) grandmother, in whose County Wexford house the family is living, they are forced to move to Dublin, where they spend some time staying with John’s aunt and uncle, before being placed in welfare housing in Ballymun, a notorious high-rise slum on the outskirts of Dublin. Building tensions within the family reach a disturbing climax, which causes John’s grandmother to re-evaluate and rescind the family’s initial banishment. The story ends with the family’s return to the Wexford house; whether this represents a lasting resolution of their problems is anything but clear. All these experiences are filtered through the perspective of John’s 12-year old’s take on events. By choosing to tell the story in the voice of this consummate unreliable narrator, Hyland sets herself a challenge that ultimately becomes a trap from which she doesn’t really manage to escape. Some quirks of John’s character are believable (his conviction that he has ‘superhuman’ lie-detecting abilities, and his obsession with having these documented in the Guinness Book of Records), but his Asperger-like tics and increasingly obvious inability to read the limited information available to him correctly make it increasingly difficult for the reader to figure out exactly what is happening. Hyland’s way of getting around this trap of her own devising is –- it took me a while to realise this, and I suspect she may not have realised it –- to have the various adults in the story interact with John in a way that is actually completely implausible for a child of his age. There are scenes between John and each of his parents which leave you shaking your head in disbelief. This further undermines the credibility of the story. Another major problem is that Hyland’s depiction of attitudes and behavior in Irish society at the time (the 1970s) seems off by at least 20 years; that is, she imputes behavior of her own generation to that of her parents.All of this makes the climactic events in the book just not credible. The violent eruption in Ballymun is overwrought, and the resolution too pat. So that this ambitious, deeply flawed, novel fails to rise above the level of ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’. Reading various newspaper reviews of “Carry Me Down” suggests that mine is a minority view. So, as always, your mileage may vary.
What do You think about Carry Me Down (2007)?
It's not easy to stick with this book. The prose is in the simple sentences of an eleven year old boy whose mind does not function within acceptable parameters of reality.John's relationships with his parents are disturbing. His life is one of utter desolation. The prose in simple sentences can tend to utter boredom, no doubt mirroring John's inner state, but it makes for hard going for the reader.Why did I keep reading? I wanted to see where this story would lead, what it had to offer. It didn't really go anywhere apart from the inevitable. However there's some essential value in the exploration of the child's mind and mental state and the social environment, in that there are children just like John, and many of them who need to be understood.The theme of lie detection also holds value as John experiences the social consequences of telling everything "as it is".And then there is also the issue of 'normality'. John's body, his brain function and social behaviour are outside the accepted norms. His emotional environment, often influenced by others' reactions to his size, offers little to confirm that he is a person of worth.So. It's an interesting exploration of difference but a difficult book to read.
—Ilyhana Kennedy
I told Karen part way through this book that she would like it. At the time there was something dark and creepy about the book and it felt kind of like Liz Jensen or Ali Smith novels can feel at times. The only thing is that the creepy feeling and foreshadowing never really come to much here. Or they do but not in a way that I found dark enough. The book works best when it feels like it is building up to something. The story that is told from the perspective from an adult sized twelve year old. The view point of the narrator is stilted in a believable childlike way, and has a whimsy to it, but not a lighthearted whimsy. Dark Whimsy? Kind of the same feeling that Liz Jensen's Louis Drax has going on at times. I don't really have too much to say about this book. My major problems with the book are spoilers, and questions about why certain things were even included in the book. Like why does the narrator have to be an adult sized twelve year old? There is one scene where it adds to the believability of the story, but an awful lot is made of his abnormal development to make this the only reason. I can't figure out if I think the book is a tad bit sloppy and doesn't tie up all of its loose ends, or if the book is wonderfully constructed and the loose ends are the gray areas that a child would have surrounding his or her immediate world. In the latter case the foreshadowing that never brings much to fruition isn't a failing, but a misreading of events by a child. And all of the holes are the holes of understanding anyone would have, but especially a child who might look like an adult, but who is still too young to understand a lot of things. I enjoy the authors writing, and liked the book, but it didn't really do that much for me. Even though I only gave the book three-stars I'd recommend it, especially since it is a fast read.
—Greg
This is getting five stars although I was distraught throughout by the depressing situation of the narrator. It's just 5 stars anyway, because of the pitch-perfect narration, because it's unflinching, because it feels true and never hits a wrong note, and because it's rare that a working class narrator is given a complex voice, a complex story, and a story that is told with generosity but also unflinching truthfulness.It's funny to read some of the other reviews because I see the book differentl
—E DB
