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 and emotionally paralysed by inner trauma and external circumstance, is a narrative that seems as inevitable and arbitrary as life itself: it reminds us that there are some truths only fiction can carry.
[...]
What’s new in this book is that we catch sight throughout of other stories, other lives: her imaginative sympathy extends beyond Patrick to each of her characters, giving the novel depth as well as force. Bleak yet moving, mercilessly dispassionate yet shot through with kindness and wit, it is a profound achievement.
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