Review by Booklist Review
At 11, John Egan is nearly six feet tall with a deep voice, and he feels like a freak, especially after he wets himself in class. John believes he is a gifted human lie detector, and he himself is a great liar; his obsession is to be famous and have his gift recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records. But why is Dad lying? The child's naive first-person, present-tense narrative brings achingly close his helplessness in a powerful adult world. He may be a giant, but he has no control. Why suddenly is the family moving? Where to? What is wrong? When they land up in the public-housing projects in Dublin, the scary threat seems to be from a brutal street gang, but the real terror turns out to be in the intimacy of his home. Focused on small things, the quiet plain scenes of daily life lead to the surprising and unforgettable climax. Pain is harder than ignorance. Who needs the truth? --Hazel Rochman Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly 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 d?nouement, one is rooting for John's place in the Guinness book and saving a space for him among the year's memorable characters. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Reminiscent of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, this work is a worthy successor to Hyland's critically acclaimed first novel, How the Light Gets In. Set in 1972, the novel relates the moving and troubling tale of John Egan's 11th year. Egan lives in Gorey, in southeast Ireland, with his mother, father, and grandmother. They coexist in a tenuous domestic peace threatened by resentment between the adults and Egan's confusion about others' shifting expectations of him. Hyland credibly evokes Egan's agony in a plaintive, perplexed, resolute, and, at times, smug voice. Convinced that he possesses the "gift of lie detection," Egan tests people to prove their truthfulness. Yet he himself stretches the truth in order to defend himself and exert some control over swiftly deteriorating personal circumstances. Egan's truth experiments ultimately culminate in cruelty and violence. Whether his family's love exonerates Egan remains ambiguous, but he does revise his rigid notions of truth to include the necessity of omission and the grace of leaving some things unsaid. Recommended for public and academic libraries. John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A child-man is ripped by forces beyond his control. Set in the Irish countryside circa 1972, Hyland's narrative begins as 11-year-old narrator and only child John Egan, home from school for the Christmas holiday, begins to notice a change in his parents' interactions with him. John has grown alarmingly large for his age, nearly as big as a man, and his beloved mother, a community puppeteer, no longer wants to coddle and kiss him. His father is unemployed and reads philosophy all day, hoping to take exams at Trinity in Dublin. As a result of his lack of income, the family has to move in with Granny, a greedy, disgusting creature who aims to spend her inherited money rather than give it to her kin. John, who devours the Guinness Book of World Records and believes he can set a record himself as a human lie detector, catches his family in a series of falsehoods: Granny gambles and hides the money she wins, all the while plotting to eject the dependent family; his father sleeps on the bedroom floor and harbors secret feelings of shame and anger; his mother tricks John into seeing a doctor and teacher about his distressing early pubescence. John is teased mercilessly at school, though a new teacher, Mr. Roche, proves to be a godsend. The tensions in the cottage gain a dangerous ascendancy and eventually explode when Granny and John's father argue. The family is ejected to Dublin, where they must move into the depressing, filthy housing project of Ballymun; their disintegration is horribly achieved. As in her first novel, How the Light Gets In (2004), Hyland demonstrates a mature sense of characterization and suspense in a thoroughly engaging narrative. A close, creepy, masterly exploration of a shattered preadolescence. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
