M.J. Hyland, How the Light Gets In
In her debut novel How the Light Gets In, Maria Hyland takes a well-worn idea, that of a troubled teenager struggling to deal with the world, and makes it more engrossing than would be expected. Coming from an emotionally and physically unhealthy family, Lou wins a scholarship to live in America. There she stays with the Harding’s, who she thinks emobdy everything that she needs to become the good person she has always wanted to be. They are clean, polite, hard working and rich. But she finds that the life there is also as stifling as the one she left behind; she is as isolated by their flawed moral barrier as she was by her dissolute family.
The intensity of the writing is most powerful as Lou copes with the anxiety of being excluded from a world that she doesn’t want to be a part of, but feels she should. The empathy that is built up does not come from her character as such, as the reader can find little sympathy for her flaws and thoughtless actions, but the depth and intensity of the writing make you understand why she ends up making so many wrong decisions.
This book is powerful and evocative and the world so perfectly captured with all its imperfections, that it is dangerous to start this book with an essay looming.
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