How the Light Gets In

by M.J. Hyland

A teenager yearns to escape her roots--but feels like an outsider with the wealthy family that takes her in--in this novel from a Booker Prize finalist.

"Sixteen-year-old Australian exchange student Louise (Lou) is ecstatic that she has left behind her rough family, who mock her for using big words, and their tiny flat choked with cigarette smoke. Placed in a wealthy Chicago suburb, in a pristine McMansion with the Harding family, Lou is stunned by the glossy 'There are so many healthy, good-looking teenagers that a few crooked teeth, or short, fat fingers, suddenly take on the proportions of deformities.' The Hardings are earnest and warm, but Lou's high-strung insecurity and wary independence begin to widen the cracks in her host family's strained domesticity, particularly when Lou turns increasingly to booze and drugs . . . Lou's furious, first-person voice is filled with piercing observations that beautifully balance Lou's teenage detachment and aching, intelligence and self-absorption, yearning and recklessness. And like Holden Caulfield, with whom she invites inevitable comparison, Lou is unmerciful toward those satisfied with easy answers." --Booklist

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult, Contemporary, Coming Of Age, Book Club, Australia, Literary Fiction

338 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2003

About the author

M.J. Hyland was born in London to Irish parents in 1968 and spent her early childhood in Dublin. She studied English and law at the University of Melbourne, Australia and worked as a lawyer for several years. Her first novel, How the Light Gets In (2003) was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Age Book of the Year and also took third place in the Barnes & Noble, Discover Great New Writers Award. How the Light Gets In was also joint winner of the Best Young Australian Novelist Award.

Carry Me Down (2006), her second novel, was winner of both the Encore Prize (2007) and the Hawthornden Prize (2007) and was also short-listed for the Man Booker Prize (2006). Hyland lives in Manchester, England, where she teaches in the Centre for New Writing at Manchester University.

Reviews

[CanadianReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The gap between who we think we are, what we’d like to say, how we’d like to behave, and then how we in fact behave, who we in fact are. This gap, this dissonance is fascinating. I want to nail this in a book. I want to create a character that shows this problem in interesting and dramatic ways. I think we all suffer from this quotidian dissonance, we all—to varying degrees—have experienced this gap between our thoughts, desires, and our actions, deeds.” —M.J. Hyland

(3.5) This is the first of Hyland's three novels (to date) and the third one I've read. It focuses on 16-year-old, Australian exchange student, "Lou"(Louise) Connor, who believes that she can somehow transform herself and her life by coming to America. Louise is the youngest child in an amoral family of grifters: her parents are frequently unemployed; her sisters are superficial, loose, and crass; their low-life boyfriends are barely this side of criminal, and all of them tumble together in a squalid council flat in Sydney. Lou is intelligent, driven, sharply observant, reliably hypercritical, frequently untruthful, morbid, and deeply uncomfortable in her own skin. Hyland's depiction of her protagonist’s profound shame and intense anxiety is second to none. There are hints of OCD, as well. All of this makes How the Light Gets In a perceptive but uncomfortable read. Surprisingly, however, there are uproariously funny moments—the most notable being Lou’s first encounter with Lishny, a Russian exchange student. (Sadly, humour is entirely lacking in Hyland’s subsequent two novels.)

Lou's host family, the Hardings, are upper middle-class, and initially the girl revels in the polished floors, the clean bed linens, and the tastefully appointed rooms of their house in the Chicago suburbs. On first arriving, Lou lies—easily but not exactly shamelessly—about her family back in Australia. (Yes, she used to have a pet kangaroo named Skippy; no, they can't phone her parents: they're on vacation in Spain.) Lou's intense self-consciousness and anxiety soon have her reaching for the bottle. Alcohol softens life’s sharp edges, pacifies her harsh internal critic, and provides her with confidence. It also causes trouble. Ultimately, the Harding parents ironically and naively find her influence on their own less-than-angelic teenage children so "corrupting" that they call in representatives of "The Organisation", the group responsible for exchange students, to have her removed from their home. The girl is taken to a house for wayward exchange students (yes, really!) in downtown Chicago. There, Lou does undergo a transformation of sorts, but Hyland intimates that true transformation of the self is very hard to achieve. Basically: wherever you go, there you are. Maybe, too, it’s not wise to discard all of one’s defence mechanisms.

Lou's infractions are far less serious in nature than those of the young men in Hyland’s later novels. Nevertheless, I found her less sympathetic than those male protagonists. She is certainly interesting, but her self-centredness and persistent unease might wear on some readers. Also, the resolution Hyland provides for her main character is abrupt and rather contrived. Even so, How the Light Gets In is a perceptive and mostly compelling portrait of a young girl.

[Oriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picking this book up was a wild stab in the dark – I was thinking to maybe dig up some Salinger but I couldn't find The Catcher in the Rye, so I went to a shelf I usually don't remember to check and scanned the spines with my eyes all like half-closed, and this one just leapt out at me. It's one of the last books I took from the Strand before I got fired, just because of the cool cover and all, and I kind of didn't think I'd ever really read it.

But! Wow, it was really quite good. And it's funny that I was looking for Salinger but came up with this, because – though I didn't know this until the end because I don't read the blurbs – like every reviewer compared this book's protagonist with Holden Caulfield. Which is odd and not too apt, I don't think, though it's been a very long time since I've read Catcher in the Rye, which was why I was looking for it in the first place.

Um, what? Oh, How the Light Gets In. It's the story of Lou Conner, a super-smart, disaffected and depressed high school senior who lives with her pretty poor, white-trash (or their version thereof) family in Australia. Her two nasty slutty older sisters spit on her and beat her up, to the jeers of their much-older nasty boyfriends, which her mom thinks is totally fine. Neither of her parents work, or read books, or do much other than watch television and drink themselves stupid. So Lou's decided her ticket out is to do a one-year study-abroad in the States, though she's quite sure she'll never be going back home.

So the book opens with her flying to Chicago to meet her host family, the Hardings, an upper-middle-class suburban clan composed of prim and proper mom, brooding and smart dad, thirteen-year-old picture-perfect Bridget, and nerdy fifteen-year-old puberty-wretched James. Everyone is very anxious to get along, but the forced pleasantries and awkward attempts at closeness, sharply juxtaposed against Lou's real wants, fears, and desires, are heartbreaking from the start. It's quickly apparent that everyone wants each other to be different than they are; everyone has constructed an image of one another that no one can hope to fulfill, and they all embark on a sad choreography of failure-to-live-up-to. There's the sexual tension between Lou and James, the competitiveness between Lou and Bridget, the questionable getting-along of Mr and Mrs Harding, the three teenagers just trying to find their different ways through all the bullshit of high school. It's in a lot of ways a pretty tragic book, because pretty much nothing goes truly right for anyone.

The characters in this book are magnificent. The dialogue is totally natural and compelling. This is definitely an elevator book: one you'll pull out even on a twenty-second elevator ride, just to read half a page, because it just propels forward. I loved it, and I recommend it highly.

[notgettingenough · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've knocked off a lot of good books over the last couple of weeks including David Cohen's Disappearing off the face of the earth, Per Petterson's It's Fine By Me and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project. Despite this competition, I expected How The Light Gets In to be the star and I have not been disappointed.

Like Gail Jones' Black Mirror , it's a first novel by an Australian. The similarities stop there. How the Light Gets In is a perfect novel. Utterly gripping, with a creepy flawed main character who nonetheless engages our sympathies from the start and never loses them, it must be right up there with best first novels ever. It'd make a great movie.

Highly recommended.

For the author's comments on her disconcertingly similar life, go here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...

[Justine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't hate it.
I didn't love it.
It tried too hard to be Catcher in the Rye.

[Jayne Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was very readable in terms of the writing style, and the theme was interesting enough – a gifted Australian teenager from a deprived background travels to Chicago to live with a family on some kind of exchange scheme. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected to though – it was a bit like driving down a long, straight road where the scenery doesn’t change. However much you don’t want to, you find yourself drifting off. In the novel, protagonist Lou makes various social faux pas, mostly by thinking the correct thing to say then saying something inappropriate. She drinks/smokes/takes drugs, alienates her foster parents, is given another chance, then messes up again, and the circle goes on. There didn’t seem to be the normal plot trajectory where everything builds up to a moment of drama. When the game changer occurs, which sends the plot ricocheting to its conclusion, it was something so minor and unconnected with the previous events that I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Having spent a couple of hundred pages feeling as though Lou largely brought her problems on herself, was I supposed to suddenly forget that and sympathise totally? I’m just not sure – about that, and about the novel as a whole.

[Louisa O'Donnell]

I really didn't like this book! Lou was selfish and really didn't take any notice of what was happening around her.
I get that she came from a shitty place and wanted to start afresh, but the way she approached the situation was dismal.
It's been a few years since I read it but the main thing I recall that really turned me off Lou was towards the end of the book when the US family she was staying with was having a family crisis and while they were rushing out the door to go to the hospital or wherever, Lou stops them to ask for money so she can buy alcohol. This really infuritated me. I could rant on for ages, this was definitely not a favourite of mine.

[christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an announcement. It’s still pretty early, but I’m confident that I have found a writer to add to my list of faves. Old list of faves, meet M.J. Hyland. M.J. Hyland, meet my boring, old, long unchanged list.

I found M.J. in an issue of Granta. She was writing about a diagnosis of MS and I just really liked the way she put sentences together. She gave me no reason to stop reading -- I’ll stop reading at the first boring word or blah blah paragraph or if the page’s aesthetic is off -- and by the end of it I was charmed in an inexplicable way. Probably not the topic. MS, meh. Probably not just because she kept talking about Joan Didion’s manageable form of MS, but it never hurts to have writers mention other writers you like. So.

Where to begin. Well, she’s had a book shortlisted for the booker prize in the mid-2000s. I didn’t want to start there. I wanted to start at the beginning where the first signs of genius were revealed. Where readers first said, “Okay. I’ll bite. Give me more.”

“How the Light Gets In.” This is the story of a 16-year-old Australian growing up crammed into an apartment thick with cigarette smoke and revelations of her sisters’ sexual fantasies. Louise Connor’s high IQ doesn’t mix well with her party-hardy family mantra and so she sets out to improve upon her life. She goes to the United States as a foreign exchange student and lands in an upscale Chicago suburb with the Harding family: Mom is a former pianist, but no longer has time to play; Dad is a little looser on the rules and spends his time smoking a pipe in the den; Daughter Bridget is a little younger than Lou and has perfectly white socks and adores shopping; Son James has acne around his mouth and wants to hate-bang Lou.

Lou is super smart with big dreams and high test scores, a fever for the flavor of Gin and smokes and is pretty socially awkward. She’s also not one to deflect an unsolicited stroke from a guy she only kind of likes, such is her need for human touch.

Lou has been so super into her plan to stay in America and start a new life that she has failed to plan for the middle ground, that period when she must play nice with a wholesome host family that doesn’t want the guest room to smell like cigarette smoke or for her to hang out with the druggie son of millionaires. Lou bumbles her way through the first half of the year hopped up on gin and making the opposite of good decisions.

Love it. Lou is this great character who, while book smart, doesn’t really seem to understand her own motives. She just kind of blows from impulse to impulse, promising to change -- to fit into the host family mold -- even when it’s seemingly an impossibility. Then, realizing she can’t meet their vision of her, she crashes the entire plan and instead of doing the best she can, she goes nostril deep in a pile of speed.

Sold. Hyland is a totally interesting writer with a head that goes to some fantastically almost-awful places. I’ll definitely be reading more.

[Chelsea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I have never read The Catcher in the Rye. I never had to read it for school and I really have no inclination of my own to read it. I did not pick this book up because it was supposed to be like Catcher in the Rye because, obviously, that meant nothing to me. It just sounded mildly interesting while perusing the shelves of the used bookstore the boy and I like to frequent, so I bought it.

I have never encountered such a stupid, frustrating heroine in my entire life. The writing quality was good, but the story revolved completely around Lou's stupid decisions, and since she's supposed to have such an enormously high IQ (though we never find out exactly what it is) it makes it all the worse.

So. The story revolves around Louise Connor, aka Lou, who moves from Sydney, Australia to somewhere around Chicago in the USA to spend a year abroad. She never wants to go back to her family because she hates them and thinks they're awful, even though they don't actually seem to be that bad. Her parents are unemployed, only receiving some sort of governmental stipend, so the family is pretty poor, but they spend their time delivering Meals on Wheels to old people, and there were several anecdotes about how sweet her mother or father could be. But Lou's real problem appears to be with her sisters. They do sound like they were mean, but... Lou didn't have to be involved with them. She also constantly calls them "sluts," a perception that appears to stem from them being interested in sex (even though neither seem to have a string of guys; one of them has a fiance, the other a boyfriend, and between the two of them only one past boyfriend is mentioned), smoke, drink, and want to have babies. Erm...what? And what's even more "what" about it is that Lou acts exactly the same way, except she's apparently afraid of sex for some reason, even though she takes her shirt off and engages in various sexually-related acts throughout the story. What what what? She also hates people who are prettier than she is, calling them all "low-IQ witches" when she never even spoke to them to determine their intelligence level. She's supposed to be quirky, I think, with her fascination for learning new words, singing, writing notes, and sleeping in spare bedrooms to cure her insomnia, but really she just comes across as your typical socially-inept character, with the bonus that she's supposed to be smart but is a total moron.

Also, everyone--and I mean everyone--in this book seems to be out to get her, or at least she thinks they are, when they all actually have perfectly good reasons for what they do. Except James and Tom, who are just creepy individuals all around. Oh, and did I mention that I'm not sure I trust Lou as a narrator? She seems to be a compulsive liar and blatantly contradicts herself at several points. I'm not sure if this was bad continuity or, what seems more likely, Hyland using Lou as an unreliable narrator.

Anyway, if you want to read a book about a complete moron who spends too much time trying to be "deep" and makes a lot of bad decisions, this would be a good book to read. The other characters are pretty well done and the writing isn't half bad at all. But Lou's sheer stupidity, contradictions, and lies made me pretty much hate her.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Setting: Chicago & environs, USA.
On the front cover of the book, the Guardian newspaper says: 'Expect to be blown away'.
To be honest, having just finished a re-read of Where the Crawdads Sing, which is one of my favourite books of all time and having read two other books by this author, I didn't expect to be blown away - and wasn't particularly.
The main character, Lou(ise) Connor, is a gifted 16-year-old from a deprived background in Sydney, Australia who has been given the opportunity to travel to America on a foreign exchange to make the most of her talents. Desperate to escape her brutal and abusive sisters and cramped family flat, Lou leaps at the opportunity - but on arrival and ensconced in a family mansion with the Hardings (mother and father Margaret and Henry and children James (15) and Bridget (13)), Lou finds that her determination to be friendly and compliant soon hits the buffers. Despite a ban on smoking and drinking, Lou is soon drawn towards these as a coping mechanism, with unfortunate consequences for her....
This is the third book I have read by this author but the first which has featured an Australian character. As a debut novel, it is pretty good overall but, from a personal point of view, I didn't much like the main character. I have something against 'self-destructive characters' in books - which is difficult as all the books I have read by this author feature just such a character! - I just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake some sense into them. I was also a bit disappointed with, yet again, an inconclusive ending as, despite my somewhat ambivalent feelings towards the main character, I would have liked to have known what actually happened to her in the end - 7/10.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this sentence: “Sometimes I sit in the mezzanine of the library and look down at the tennis courts and wonder what it would be like to wear a pair of shorts and sit with my knees apart opposite somebody who is also wearing shorts sitting with their knees apart.” Somehow that sentence says everything you need to know about this book. Who hasn’t watched a commercial for, say, breakfast cereal or fabric softener and wanted to jump through the TV screen and live in that world of crisp white sheets and smiling, happy families who pour milk out of clear glass pitchers? Lou, the 16-year-old narrator of this story, has bought into that idea without knowing it’s just an idea. She comes to the United States as a foreign exchange student and watches as her American dream becomes a kind of nightmare. That sounds depressing, but the book is so, so funny.

I didn’t appreciate the dot-dot-dot of an ending. But I forgive you for that, book. (Sort of.) Because the rest was so good. (But I still really want to know what happens to her.)

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I studied creative writing at uni, my tutor was M.J Hyland. She always struck me as analytical and deep in thought. She would ask questions of people and really, really study them when they gave the answer. This book is written with that same analytical, watchful eye.
The story is sad and lamenting and (being Australian myself) a great depiction of a certain kind of Australian family.
That constant longing for being something else or being better or more confident, more popular, less awkward, happier is something that touched a nerve with the 16 year old version of me. Hylands' writing is insightful and touching. Lou is beautiful and ugly at the same time.
It's comforting to read something someone else wrote and be able to feel like you can empathise with them and understand their actions and decisions.
M.J. once told me I should look deeper at my characters and think about why they would do what I have forced them to do with my writing. I think this book is the beginning of her mastery of that.

[Bria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking book about how difficulty it is to escape from poverty. While the main character (Lou) has enormous intellect and potential, she is so emotional scarred that her downfall is inevitable. What was particularly sad was there were so many opportunities for people to assist her change her behaviour and situation but, due to their own flaws and problems, and Lou’s inability to be truthful, effective help does not eventuate. Beautifully written, however sometimes disturbing, as it is written from Lou’s point of view which is troubled and perhaps erroneous.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book felt a lot like floating. Maybe beacsue the main character spent a lot of time either totally out of it pr in her own head. It was pretty enjoyable and cool. I related to many parts but I also felt pain at that. The MC is a massive pick me and honestly quite cruel in parts. Certainly had good vibes. The kind you feel when you can see all of the sky or you hold your breath until your lungs burn. It was nice to be so it the moment and also so detached.

[tee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm well aware that I should do my reviews as soon as I've finished reading something, otherwise all my delerious passion/hatred/love; whatever emotions were conjured up, dissipate. I liked this book. Three stars looks like a dismal rating because there's those two empty unclicked little stars looking all sad and shit, but I really did like this book. It was one of those easy-to-read, don't-have-to-think books. But still well written. I'm not talking Twilight here, I mean, I had to think a lot when I attempted reading Twilight. I had to think about the amount of pain my brain was in, I had to calm various intense emotions, so on and so forth.

No, this was different. People say it was like 'Catcher in the Rye'. Well, I object to that because I loathed Catcher in the Rye (though I'm contemplating re-reading it just to ensure I wasn't just hormonally-challenged when I read it the first time around). But I guess it had the same disaffected, apathetic tone. Angst. Teenagers. Y'know. I don't really remember what happened now that a few weeks have passed. That's not really saying too much considering I have a memory like a sieve. A sieve that is missing the entire sieve part and is just a big gaping hole.

But Hyland's book was good, I sort of understood the main character, Lou. I think I would have enjoyed reading about her disfunctional family back in Australia, more than reading about the Hardings. Once she gets to the States, I found everyone rather bland. James was just creepy, and not in an interesting way - just in a pimply adolescent, spy-cam in the bathroom, rub-up-against-your-leg kind of way. The sister was boring. Do I just expect too much? Am I a high-maintainence book reader? Yes and yes.

My high expectations aside, this book was good. It was a page-turner, I didn't put it down until I had finished. I walked up the street reading it at one stage. I don't know what more I wanted to make it a four, or five star, but it just seemed to lack something. For me.

Hyland writes well, smooth, nothing fancy, here's the only quote I underlined:

Lishny has told me that Lily was once a kindergarten teacher. She says she has enlarged kneecaps from years of bending to talk to children. Her tall, waistless body is roughly made of three segments, with a strange bulge in the middle. She looks like an enormous.

I'm looking forward to reading more of Hyland's work.

[Elizabeth Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really curious book, with an odd and at times off-putting heroine. I've read it several differnt times trying to get a firmer grip on what exactly I think of it as a whole, but each time all I can honestly conclude is that there is something very hypnotic and compelling about it. At every step it was apparent to me how and why she ended up where she did, even though to every once else around her, it would appear that her amazingly high IQ could've afforded her many better opportunities.

[Indya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was such a random book, with a horrible main character, creepy side characters, and so many unexplained events. The last few pages were even more bizarre than I could have expected and I am left with so many questions to which I will never have the answers to. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the writing; it certainly wasn’t the kind of style that I could get lost in or anything. The only thing that kept me going was my need to find out WHY any of the characters acted the way they did. Unfortunately, that was never revealed.

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lou Connor is no Holden Caulfield. Let's just get that out of the way.

Lou Connor is a conniving teenager that uses her sexuality and intellect to get what she wants. The book uses Lou's exchange student status as a literary vehicle to show the morbundity of American suburbia...yada yada yada.

Frankly, I think two hours of your time watching American Beauty would do a better job.

The writing is good, but not good enough for me to recommend the book.

[Maryellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This turned into a non-stop (almost) read. Louisa and her life as an exchange student in a Chicago family ensconced in suburban life is endearing, witty and overall rather a sad portrait of coming to self-awareness and discovering exactly where ones own individuality lies.

[Gila Gila · Rating 4 out of 5]

(When this first came out I wrote here - not as good as "this is how" but i'm such a fan of hyland's that i'd recommend any of her novels.)

Update, 2025 -
Over the last day into night into today, I reread this novel, as well as skip-reading M.J. Hyland’s first book, Carry Me Down. I’m not sure what pulled me to do this; I’m in the middle of other reads. Perhaps it hit me that my attachment to her last book, This is How, is so strong that it was odd I could barely remember her first 2.

What I found was that while neither of them are as vivid and chilling as her last, they are both extremely good, and wrenchingly sad. I think her books improved with each one in order. How the Light Gets in follows Lou, an Australian teenager who’s only known life growing up in impoverished council flats, grim, cramped, alcohol and cigarette hazed, suddenly on her way to America as a gifted student who’s won a year abroad with a Host Family. It is not surprising that the family is blind to their extravagant home, their general good fortune, anymore than it is unexpected that Lou, longing for acceptance, blows everything up. Even knowing what’s likely coming, the book is hard to put down.

All 3 of Hyland’s novels speak from that same stunted place of the outsider completely alone in a place where they do not know the right language, the right response, the right anything; how to hold one’s body, how to hold one’s tongue, how to hold in the rage built over a lifetime of alienation. She has a unique writer’s voice - her narrators read as likely autistic, but she never labels them with that or any other specific diagnosis. She said once that many people suggest her characters have autism but she does not want to “pathologise” her characters, not wanting such a neat cause and effect. They are all too human and identifiable, it’s in how well she captures what it is to do or say precisely the wrong thing when every atom of your being planned for, prayed for - just once - getting it right.

(Final note - if anyone who likes this book, or feels pulled to it, happens upon this post, I hope you’ll also take a look at
Lights All Night Long, by Lydia Fitzpatrick, a striking novel again focused on an exchange student, this one from a destitute town of impenetrable cold in Russia to the too bright lights of Louisiana).

[Moore Flannery · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, thank you Oxfam Books in Kentish Town for this 99p treat on a cold Thursday afternoon. I sat in a coffee shop and read so much of this I forgot what I was meant to be doing next. MJ Hyland slips straight into the voice of Lou, the smart, self-destructive Australian teenager, who somehow manages to scholarship herself out of her trailer trash family straight into the bosom of an ambitious, right-on, American one. Despite her chaotic streak, hers is the voice you trust, the host-family are too clinically normal from the start, and they fail to understand her even more than her own folk. Some elements begin to lose their credibility as the story breaks away from the believable claustrophobia of the huge house and the family dynamic that Lou was invited into, and then forcibly removed from. The final parts in the detention centre somehow just don't sit right, and the visit to the poor family living in the 'wrong' part of Chicago, frankly rings as true as one of Scrooge's dreams in A Christmas Carol.

I wanted greater progression between Lou and some of the male relationships she makes, and clearly favours - but that question feels like it's sort of left on a shelf somewhere, in order to wrap up the story somehow.

And so it ends - strangely, off -key, with her in the US as she dreamed, but incarcerated, worse off than if she had returned to Australia - and you can't believe it. You can't let yourself believe it. I mean I know she's trouble MJ Hyland, but even YOU walked away from her..... I mean come on, just who doesn't believe that everything would be okay, really okay if they could just sleep in other people's beds?

Hmmmm ? Oh. Just me then.

This would be a strong 4 star book if the last third didn't abandon the main character in no mans story land.

[*sj* · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those books I love and deeply respect, even if I don't entirely enjoy it. Genuinely well written, so feels like a privilege to read.

The writing is spare and to the point. Honest, unembellished, clean. The characters are relatable, sympathetic, yet not indulged, and frequently hard to like - particularly the adolescent protagonist, Lou, whose voice tells this, her story. Incredibly well-observed with a less-is-more style.

The story has it's own life, free from the sense of being driven by the author or any other agenda. One of those novels which has slow, quiet pace, yet has so much tension roiling with loads of rich, human stuff going on. It truly captures the excruciating self-awareness of an intelligent teenager struggling with the inner neuroses that are legacy of a toxic upbringing, as well as her muddled, if understandable, attempts to reinvent who she is in the context of a world she finds little to relate to. There is no clear-cut, neat & tidy resolution awating the reader here. Instead, a sense of ongoing uncertainty that mirrors the messy complexity of actual living, which provides it's own sense of comfort for those of us who don't always want to be coddled in the lie of happy-ever-afters.

I had not read anything by MJ Hyland before and her writing style reminded me of work by Cormac McCarthy and JM Coetzee.

On the strength of this debut novel from Hyland, I have added more of her work to my WTR list.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

After having read and loved Hyland's "This is How" last year, I was anxious to read more by her. "How the Light Gets In" is about a high school exchange student from Australia who gets placed with a host family in the Chicago suburbs, and much of the novel focuses on her trying, quite unsuccessfully, to fit in despite coming from a very different family and background. Unfortunately, I couldn't emphasize or sympathize much with the main character -- which made reading the novel difficult for me. I spent most of the novel thinking the main character was shallow and unappreciative. I thought she was pretty unremarkable, which made it hard to get through the book.
Hyland apparently likes to present main characters that are unlikeable people. But while it worked for me in "This is How," it didn't work here.

[Tress · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was just meh. Quick read, filled some time, shattered no thought processes for me. I finished it a few days ago and have been waiting to see if some latent impression of brilliance would set in (that often happens to me) but it has not.

Maybe I am the only person alive who did not LOVE J. D. Salinger, even as a teen, or maybe I am just at a point in life where I cannot enjoy reading a book from the POV of a teenager who is trapped inside her own self-absorbency. All of the adults were one or two dimensional cartoon characters. Fine, maybe that is an accurate portrayal of how teenage girls see them, but it didn't help me care all that much about her self-inflicted woes.

Well, the critic reviews were good, so maybe I'm wrong. But I would not be likely to recommend this one.

[Magdelanye · Rating 3 out of 5]

two stars for the irritation factor,
four stars for the occasional brilliant insight into how the best intentions cannot change patterns of self sabatogue That nets a big 3

Lou is an exchange student from Australia who is bright enough to agonize about the discrepancies between her inner life and her behavior. its very irritating indeed and it isn't always easy to extend compassion to this awkward girl whose honesty is constantly swamped by denial and advanced disassociation. Nothing matches up, and her longing for belonging is compromised by her aversion for genuine intimacy.
indeed, the book is a sad testament to the persistent damage done to children by the dysfunctional nuclear family.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really interesting because it showed me a demomgraphic I had never read about or met before. It revolved around a poor young girl from Austrailia living with her unbearable family. The girl, Lou, enters into a foregin exchange program in which she goes to live with a very wealthy family in California. Lou has an extremely difficult time dealing with a family that enforces rules such as no smoking. The book goes through her troubles and how she is mistreated and judged because of where she came from and her past troubles.

[Lauren · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the summary, I expected this to be a sinister, chilling story where the main character ends up in a situation much like "The Stepford Wives" or some such where the perfect suburban outer shell of her host family hides disturbing secrets.

Instead, I got a girl who desired to change her life and wanted nothing to do with her family, only to... not change her life and act exactly as she described her family. It was hard for me to feel any empathy for Lou, whose problems were her own fault.

[The Lexington Bookie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This really wasn't my cup of tea. The pacing was slow throughout, and I struggled to connect with the main character because she was so slow to reveal any of her deeper emotions other than her observations of everyone around her. I was also suspicous and leary of the supporting characters the whole time, so I had a hard time with the emotional aspect of this book that was supposed to be dark and deep.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some good spots to this book and it carried enough interest (barely) for me to complete it. There are a precious few quirky takes on life that made me laugh and hope for more. But for the most part, it seemed to drone on without much variation.

[Loren · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was such a disappointment! It was well written but the storyline was lacking. Not much happened throughout the whole book and the characters were bland and unlikeable, making it hard to care what happened to any of them! Definitely not one I'd recommend.

[Catherine Lutvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main character’s journey captured my interest enough to keep persisting to the end as I wanted to know what happened. I’m disappointed I kept reading though as the ending was the worst and made me think I should’ve stopped reading after the first few chapters.