Carry Me Down
From the author of the sleeper hit of 2004, How the Light Gets In, comes a formidable follow-up novel about a young boy’s diligent collection of a “log of lies” and the frightening family blowup it causes. Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee called this novel “writing of the highest order.”
John Egan is a misfit—“a twelve year old in the body of a grown man with the voice of a giant”—who diligently keeps a “log of lies.” John’s been able to detect lies for as long as he can remember. It’s a source of power but also great consternation for a boy so young. With an obsession for the Guinness Book of Records, a keenly inquisitive mind, and a kind of
faith, John remains hopeful despite the unfavorable cards life deals him.
This is one year in a boy’s life. On the cusp of adolescence, from his changing voice and body to his parents’ difficult travails and the near collapse of his sanity, John is like a tuning fork sensitive to the vibrations within himself and the trouble that this creates for him and his family.
Carry Me Down is a restrained, emotionally taut, and sometimes outrageously funny portrait whose drama drives toward, but narrowly averts, an unthinkable disaster.