Carry Me Down - M. J. Hyland
by Zia ~ January 3rd, 2007. Filed under: Books.
In the beginning of Carry Me Down, John Egan and his parents are sitting in a warm kitchen. It is the middle of winter, and they are reading. It’s hard to imagine a cozier, more comforting scene. But within a single page, there’s an unsettling sense of disquiet; everything just seems off. We learn, for instance, that John and his mother have an odd relationship, that John and his father have a distant one. We learn that John is almost freakishly tall. The family lives with the grandmother. John is obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records, and he is convinced that he has a talent–the ability to see when people are lying–that will get him into it. This is one of those novels where what isn’t said is more important than what is, and when it comes right down to it, everyone is lying. Even John. Gorgeously written and quietly sinister.
January 5th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Wah! This is another book I loved! “Quietly sinister” sums it up. I could never quite put my finger on what was wrong and that was what kept me reading.
January 5th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
I’m still puzzled about it. I thought that he and his mother had something sick and twisted going on … but then she wouldn’t have insisted on the psychiatrist at the end, right? What was your take?
January 5th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
I thought he was suffering from mental illness and probably appeared very much stranger to the people around him than the way he described himself as the narrator. But I’m puzzled by it too. The mother was pregnant at the end, wasn’t she? Still trying to work out what that was all about.
January 5th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
I just sent a comment but it said it had put me in the spam bin! Oh dear. Anyway, I was saying that I thought the main character was suffering from mental illness and probably appeared much stranger to the people around him than he would admit in his descriptions. I also thought the mother was pregnant at the end. Now I’m wondering if that was actually much sicker than I realised at the time…
January 6th, 2007 at 10:10 am
I don’t know what’s going on with my comments … sorry about that!
I hadn’t picked up on the mother being pregnant in the end but it would fit in with the general story. I agree that he had some mental illness, but it was never clear to me what caused it. Then there was the mother, who was always sending him mixed signals … “Don’t look at me like that,” “Come sleep in my bed.” I don’t know. And perhaps that’s the point, after all.
January 6th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
I think it was me, my connection dropped out as the comment was being sent so I pressed on “send” again. That probably sent the comment twice and tripped the anti-spam.
What I liked about Carry Me Down was that it got me thinking. I still think about the story now, months after I read. I love a book that gets into my brain like that. I’ll be looking out for more books by M J Hyland.