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Archive for the ‘reviews’ Category

Geordie Williamson reviews This is How

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Leading Australian book critic Geordie Williamson has reviewed This is How in the newspaper The Australian. The full review is here.
Here’s an extract:
Hyland’s writing, which has only increased in strangeness with each new book, emerges from a shifting of co-ordinates between cold-eyed clinician and artist’s empathetic heart. Her characters are constructed from the tension between [...]

This is How reviewed in The New Statesman

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

John O’Connell reviews This is How in The New Statesman
The full review is online here.
Here’s an extract:
In his desire to force a face-off between the Two Cultures, McEwan often seems to be writing himself out of a job. M J Hyland, in her subtle and richly exploratory new novel, adopts the opposite approach, announcing her [...]

This is How reviewed in The Telegraph

Monday, July 20th, 2009

The Telegraph has reviewed This is How.
The full review is available online here.
An extract:

MJ Hyland is an expert anatomist of the bruises left on a fragile mind by a hard world.
[...]
Hyland mentions Albert Camus as one of her literary inspirations, and Oxtoby shares with Camus’s Meursault – and with a rogue’s gallery of literary [...]

The Independent reviews This is How

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Anita Sethi reviews This is How in the Independent
The full review can be read here.
Here’s an extract:

As in her earlier books, Hyland beautifully and devastatingly depicts her sympathetic anti-hero’s painful craving for closeness.
[...]
Hyland, a former lawyer, has a shrewd and convincing eye for the minutiae of the justice (and injustice) system, as Patrick is subjected [...]

Financial Times review of This is How

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Julie Myerson, author of The Lost Child, reviews This is How for the Financial Times. The full review is here.
Here’s an excerpt:
The descriptions of prison life are impeccable and chilling in their detail, entirely convincing in their evocation of how men rub along together when deprived of freedom, family and hope. Oxtoby’s relationships with his [...]

The Times review of This is How

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Helen Dunmore reviews This is How for The Times. The full review is here>
An extract:
the novel offers a moment-by-moment account of the transformation that takes place when a person commits an irrevocable act and enters the criminal justice system. Hyland’s focus is steady, her detail relentless.
[...]
This is an expertly paced, gripping novel that doesn’t falter [...]

The Guardian review of This is How

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Justine Jordan reviews This is how in the Guardian. The full review can be found here. Here are some excerpts:
“This is it. I need to shit and I need to cry and I can do neither.” How the subject of MJ Hyland’s outstanding third novel comes to be thrust into a shared prison cell, physically [...]

Carry Me Down Observer Review by Geraldine Bedell

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Here’s an extract from the review of Carry Me Down published in the English Newspaper The Observer. Geraldine Bedell, a regular reviewer and contributor to The Guardian and The Observer is also the author of a novel, The Gulf Between Us
John Egan is huge, gangling and vulnerable, a 12-year-old child-man on the cusp of adolescence, [...]