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 perfection: ‘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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9780802197764

M.J. Hyland

M. J. HYLAND was born in London in 1968 to Irish parents and spent her early childhood in Dublin. She studied law and English at the University of Melbourne and worked for several years as a lawyer. Her first novel, How the Light Gets In, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Eurasia Region) and for The Age Book of the Year in Australia and, in 2004, she was named Young Australian Writer of the Year.How the Light Gets In also took third place in the 2004 Barnes & Noble Discover Award for fiction. M. J. Hyland lives in London, England.

Book preview

Part One

1

In less than two hours this aeroplane will land at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It’s lunchtime. My window shutter is open, the sky is vast and blue and the earth is brown and flat. The air hostess has delivered my drink and my meal, and on the in-flight TV, a panel of Christians are talking about the recent execution by lethal injection of a man on death row in Texas.

‘He was a Christian,’ says a woman holding a crucifix.

‘For his last meal he requested a banana, a peach and a salad with either ranch or Italian dressing,’ says a man with a beard.

‘He should rot in hell,’ says another.

I lift the foil from the white plastic dish on my tray, but I cannot eat.

I don’t know how the old woman sitting next to me can stuff warm chicken into a bread roll and eat it, while right in front of her there’s a picture of a gurney covered in leather straps in an execution chamber.

Now there’s a picture of death row. Men wearing orange shirts and trousers are holding onto the bars of their cells, or lying on their narrow beds staring at the ceiling.

The old woman looks at the screen and drinks her drink.

Now there’s a man being interviewed, his eyes covered with a black strip to protect his identity.

‘Many years ago,’ he says, ‘I worked for a certain state penitentiary. I was the guy who pulled the switch.’

The interviewer asks him if he was always certain of the guilt of the men he helped to kill. The man looks away from the interviewer. ‘Pretty sure. As sure as you can be, I guess.’ And then, after a confused pause, ‘Yeah, I was sure. Most of the time.’

The old woman finishes her chicken roll. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ she says. ‘An eye for an eye.’

To stop myself from screaming, I count the uneaten peas on her tray and start to give each of them a name.

‘What do you do with bad eggs in your country?’ she asks.

‘We put them in the bin.’

Paula, Patrick, Patricia, Penelope, Paul, Pilar.

‘Huh?’

‘The trash,’ I say. ‘The garbage. We put them in the garbage for the cats and birds to eat.’

She says ‘Oh’ and then is quiet. I know she would gladly watch an execution, stare through the glass as the needle is plunged into somebody’s arm.

‘Have you come to America to study?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m an exchange student.’

I look away.

‘That sounds like fun,’ she says.

I turn back to her, just in case she’s a plant from the Organisation, sent to check on my civility. This is just the kind of thing the Organisation would do.

‘What city are you from?’ she asks. She has green sleep in the corners of her eyes.

‘Sydney,’ I say. ‘I can see the harbour and the opera house from my bedroom window.’

‘How wonderful.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It is.’

I can’t see the harbour, or the opera house, from the bedroom window of the high-rise commission flat where I live. All I can see is the edge of the city; the lights spread out in rows like a circuit board.

‘Well, you won’t have views like that in Chicago. And it won’t be sunny all year round, either.’

‘I hate the sun anyway,’ I say. ‘I prefer cold weather.’

‘Oh my,’ she says, folding her arms for emphasis. ‘You won’t be saying that in a few months.’

‘Maybe not,’ I say. ‘Do you want my chicken?’

‘Oh, no,’ she says, disgusted.

When the plane begins its descent, I look down at the edges of Chicago and wonder why I’m only happy when I’m looking forward to something, and why when something happens it’s never as good as I have imagined it will be. I’d like to know whether I’m the only person in the world who feels this way. Right now I should be happier than ever. Being on this flight is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.

I keep thinking this way, chewing it over like a cud, so that ten minutes before landing I am so nervous about meeting my host-parents, I can hardly breathe. My teeth feel metallic. I get up and lock myself in the bathroom and coat the palms of my hands with talcum powder.

The seatbelt light comes on and the bell rings. I stay where I am. An air hostess knocks on the door. I open it.

‘Please return to your seat,’ she says.

I follow her down the aisle to my seat. She smells nice.

‘Excuse me?’ I say. ‘Could I possibly borrow some of your perfume?’ She puts her hand on the small of my back and her zombie face does not move.

‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘you’ll have to return to your seat now.’

When I sit down the old lady grabs my arm, digging into me with her sharp yellow nails. Compared to the air hostess, she smells like stale vase water.

‘Are you afraid of landing?’ I ask.

‘I think I’m going to die,’ she says.

‘You won’t die,’ I say, and immediately blush to crimson at the stupidity of my words.

The aeroplane lands and the passengers rush into O’Hare’s domestic arrivals area. It’s noisier than a turkey farm, and the hot lights, orange as incubator lamps, beat down on the back of my head.

A man in a dark suit holds a sign with my name on it. I know that he is Henry Harding, my host-father. I know that the woman standing next to him, also wearing a dark suit, is my host-mother, Margaret Harding.

No member of my family has ever been overseas. My mum (Sandra), my dad (Mick), and my two teenage sisters, (Erin and Leona), live squashed together in our three-bedroom flat (four bedrooms, if you count the box-room) and the few places I have ever been with them did not involve visas, suitcases or aeroplanes.

I wave at my host-parents. Henry is the first to step forward.

‘You must be Louise Connor,’ he says, holding out his hand.

‘Yes,’ I say, as I offer my hand. ‘It’s great to meet you.’

‘The feeling’s mutual,’ says Margaret, smiling. ‘Welcome to our family.’

‘We hope that the year you spend with us will be a very happy one,’ says Henry.

‘Me too,’ I say.

‘Let’s get you home,’ says Margaret. She steps towards me and takes my hand between both of hers.

This sudden intimacy makes me acutely aware of my teeth and the way they don’t sit properly in my jaw. My mouth has lost its hold on my face. Nobody has ever held my hand before, except when I was a small child, of course, and except for the first boy I kissed, who held my hand when we were roller-skating. I couldn’t stand it then, and I can’t stand it now. Nothing makes me feel more uncomfortable.

I let go and she keeps smiling.

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘We can’t leave until somebody from the Organisation fills in some forms.’

‘Why don’t we sit down, then?’

‘Good idea,’ says Henry, who is fair of skin and hair. His eyelashes and eyebrows are barely visible. Henry is an almost-albino.

We sit in moulded plastic seats and watch the other exchange students meet their host-families.

‘I love flying,’ I say. ‘I love how on the wing of the plane there’s writing that says, Do not walk past this point.’

‘That’s funny,’ says Margaret to Henry. ‘Don’t you think that’s funny?’

‘No,’ says Henry softly. ‘I mean, I hadn’t thought of that before.’ He frowns.

‘Well,’ says Margaret to Henry, ‘isn’t it just a great treat to meet Louise at last?’

‘It really is,’ says Henry, putting his hand on his wife’s leg.

‘I agree,’ I say and put my hand on my jeans to soak up the claggy paste made out of my sweat and too much talcum powder.

The Organisation’s regional president comes over. Her name is Florence Bapes and she was my team leader during the week-long orientation camp in Los Angeles.

‘I’m Florence Bapes,’ she says, ‘That’s apes with a B.’

‘Hello,’ says Henry. ‘Great to meet you.’

Florence shakes Margaret’s hand.

‘I’ll be Louise’s mentor this year,’ she says. ‘You can call me Flo.’

During the flight, Flo paced up and down the aisle and checked on me four times. She said ‘How ya doin’?’ each time, and I don’t think I want to hear her say it again.

‘Hi, Flo,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

Flo has abnormally small brown eyes, tiny and dark, with no discernible pupils.

‘I’m fantastic and getting better,’ she says.

This is Flo’s catchphrase; she says it every time somebody asks her how she is, as though she is the host of a game show.

Margaret smiles at me, then licks her top lip with a tongue that’s surprisingly wide and fat.

‘Well,’ says Flo, ‘make sure you ring Lou’s parents and let them know she’s safe and sound.’ She drapes her arm over my shoulder and squeezes me. ‘This young girl needs a lot of TLC.’

Flo threatens to hug me, so I move away from her. She thinks I need help because I’m here on a scholarship for dis advantaged students, and because she found out I’ve never eaten salmon before. At the camp she came into my dormitory, and sat on the end of my bed, so I felt compelled to tell her things. When she found out that I used to eat tinned soup donated by the Salvation Army, she nearly cried.

‘Yes, of course,’ says Margaret, reaching out to put her hand on my shoulder. ‘We’ll call tonight. I’m looking forward to talking to Louise’s parents.’

‘You can’t,’ I say.

Flo looks at her watch. ‘Why not?’

‘I’ve just remembered,’ I say. ‘My whole family’s gone to Spain for a month.’

‘Oh,’ says Flo, not as sceptical as she should be. ‘Well make sure and call as soon as they’re back from their holiday. And don’t forget tonight’s meeting at my place.’

‘That’ll be great,’ I say. ‘Let’s go to luggage-claim and get my suitcases.’

‘I’ll be going then,’ says Flo, as though we should be sad that she has to leave. ‘See you tonight. Seven-thirty sharp.’

‘We look forward to it,’ says Margaret.

‘Terrific,’ I say. ‘Fantastic.’

Henry looks at me, and frowns.

It’s true that my mum and dad won’t be home to answer the phone. They’re staying with my mum’s eldest sister who has broken her hip. But Erin and her twenty-five-year-old boyfriend Steve will be at home, fouling my bedroom with dope fumes from their shampoo-bottle bong. Leona will also be there, probably getting drunk and using my mum and dad’s bed to make a baby with her fiancé, Greg, a mechanic, who has eczema on his oil-stained fingers.

If Henry or Margaret were to ring the flat tonight, Steve would probably answer the phone the way he always does, with some supernaturally unamusing comment. It was Steve – who works as a bouncer at the pub on the corner of our street – who made me realise that I never want to live with my family again.

Three weeks before leaving home, I took the day off school so that I could have the flat to myself. My mum and dad – who are unemployed and collect fortnightly pensions – spent the whole day lounging together on the couch, smoking and watching chat shows. Erin came home at lunchtime with Steve and three of his mates, each carrying a six-pack of beer.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, reading anonymous lyrics of fifteenth-century poets. Steve stood over me while the pizza rotated and unfroze itself in the microwave.

‘Ha!’ he said, pointing over my shoulder at the page. ‘I have a gentle cock.’

I closed the book and stood up. ‘It’s a poem about a bird,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘a bird on my cock!’

I kicked him in the shin, and one of his mates said, ‘Whaddya wanna do with her, Steve?’

Steve clipped the back of my head and said, ‘She’ll keep.’

I tried to spit at Steve’s friend, but the spit landed on my shoe.

‘Hey,’ said Steve, excited at how much I was blushing, coming towards me with pizza in his hand. ‘Does miss scholarship smartypants wanna go down to the car park for some spitting lessons?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ I said, and went downstairs with Steve and his mates to spit at the washing on the clothes line and drink some beer. I was saying goodbye.

‘I’ll carry your suitcases,’ says Henry.

‘They have wheels,’ I say, but when he tries to pull my suitcases along behind him, a wheel falls off. I pick it up and turn red.

‘It always does that.’

‘Never mind,’ says Margaret. ‘We’ll carry one each.’

As Margaret and Henry walk on ahead, I stop and look back. The other exchange students are saying goodbye to each other, hugging and exchanging addresses as though they are lifelong friends.

‘Wait for me!’ I call out, in a voice that’s not really mine, and run towards Henry and Margaret, towards their tall bodies and the backs of their clean, dark suits.

Henry reaches out with his free arm and drapes it over my shoulder. I take a deep breath, and then, at last, it happens. I smell my future in Henry’s aftershave.

It is easy for smells to remind people of the past: the smell of a cake eaten at the seaside, a ham sandwich, rosary beads or an orange. But I can smell my future in just the same way, and the smell of Henry tells me that, from now on, I will sleep on cleaner sheets.

2

Henry drives us home. The Mercedes smells as though it has just come out of its plastic packet.

‘Is this a new car?’

‘Yes,’ says Margaret. ‘Do you like it?’

‘It’s lovely,’ I say.

‘It’s a pretty long drive,’ says Margaret. ‘We hope you enjoy the scenery.’

‘I will,’ I say, but all I can see so far are cars and billboards – just like Sydney.

Henry and Margaret take it in turns to ask me polite questions. What food do I like? What sports do I play? How hot does it get in Sydney? Do I like the beach? Have I ever seen a kangaroo?

I sit in the back and wish I did not have to talk. I feel too nervous and can’t help lying. I say I play lots of sport. I say I like the beach. I say I once had a pet kangaroo called Skippy. They like these stories and so I tell more of them. I feel dirty. They have such white teeth and mine are so rotten.

‘Do you agree with capital punishment?’ I ask.

Margaret turns around to look at me. It’s the first time she’s looked at me without smiling.

‘Me?’

‘Yeah, and Henry.’

She looks at Henry.

‘No, I most certainly do not,’ she says, as though I’ve accused her of something.

Henry looks at me in the rear-vision mirror.

‘No, I don’t either. Definitely not.’

Margaret faces the road.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I just wondered,’ I say.

Nobody speaks.

‘I think I’ll lie down for a minute,’ I say.

‘If you like,’ says Margaret. ‘But keep yourself strapped in.’

Henry wakes me as we enter town.

‘We’re here,’ he says, pointing at the sign that says ‘Welcome to B—’ and tells you the population, which is 480,320. The sign says B— is ‘A Great Town to Be In’.

Margaret tells me about the national parks, the new shopping centre and about the teacher-to-student ratio in the high school I’ll be going to, and then we pull into the wide drive of the Harding house.

My new home is a suburban mansion: two storeys, wide, tall and white, with six big white columns on the front porch and curtains clean as milk in the windows. The middle attic-style window at the top has one pale-blue shutter open, one closed. I want this to be my room.

The quiet street, lined with identical trees, has the cropped symmetry of a street in an elaborate model village or train set, freshly painted, no dirt.

‘What a magnificent house!’ I say. ‘I love it.’

Henry pushes the front door open with his back. He goes up the staircase, dragging my two suitcases behind him. Another wheel falls off.

‘Come with me,’ says Margaret. ‘I’ll take you on the grand tour.’

There are stained-glass windows on either side of the front door. In the entrance hall, red and blue spots, cast by the glass on the sun-soaked floor, look like spilt paint.

‘Oh, look!’ I say, as though I’ve just seen a cat use a sewing machine.

Margaret smiles. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’

‘Yeah,’ I say.

When I say ‘yeah’ I think I have already picked up an American accent.

Margaret shows me some of the fifteen-room house: dining-room, kitchen and family room. The air is fresh for the inside of a house. It’s a dewy, clean air, easy to breathe, as though the leaves of the giant trees are inside as well as out.

Where I used to live there is carpet so threadbare you can see through to its veins, and the couch and armchairs are made of vinyl that peels away like sunburnt skin. But here there are polished wood floors, heavy, solid furniture, oil paintings and ceiling-high bookshelves.

I point to the panels of wood that reach half-way up the walls.

‘What’s that called?’

‘Wainscoting. Do you like it?’

‘It must be like living inside an enormous tree house.’

‘I’d never thought of it like that. What a sweet idea.’

She sounds like she has a cold. So does Henry, but I like their accents. Not too strong, not too distracting.

Margaret leads me up the stairs. I am just thinking how I will probably like her and Henry, and how I hope they like me, when she puts her arm through mine. My arm feels like a sick snake, allergic to something, hot and poisoned. My face grows hotter. My ears and my neck burn red. I try not to let her see my face. Henry comes out of a door at the top of the landing.

‘We’ll meet you downstairs,’ says Margaret.

‘Good idea,’ he says with a smile so tight and wide it must be hurting his face. I know how he feels. When the pressure to be happy is this strong, it feels like somebody is strangling you.

Margaret takes my hand and leads me along the hallway.

‘This is mine and Henry’s room.’

This room is yellow, has a four-poster bed and an ensuite.

‘This is Bridget’s room.’

Bridget’s room is pink and neat.

‘This is James’ room.’

James’ room is blue and messy.

She leads me back the way we came, and we stop at the top of the landing. ‘And this room is yours.’

Margaret opens the door and I see the clean, white, tiny room with the attic window; one pale-blue shutter open, one pale-blue shutter closed.

‘This is your bed.’

‘What a beautiful room,’ I say. Life would be perfect if she wasn’t holding my hand. ‘It’s great.’ I let go of her hand.

The quilt is as white as a new stick of chalk and hangs down to the dustless floorboards. There is a stack of pillows on the bed, white, pink and cream, like marshmallows spilled fresh from a bag. All I want to do is sleep.

Here is my walk-in cupboard and here is my redwood desk with its set of drawers. Here are the keys to the drawers.

‘Do you like it?’

At home, the room I share with Erin has buckled posters of stupid pop stars all over the walls, and ugly, smutty photographs of my sisters stuck on the back of the door; photographs from the day they paid a hundred dollars at the shopping mall for a makeover and slut-like portraits. There are always stinking ashtrays full of butts next to Erin’s bed and knickers drying on the doorknob.

‘It’s perfect,’ I say.

‘Good,’ says Margaret, suddenly standing between me and the bed, her eyes flickering blue and delighted. I feel dirty and don’t know what to do.

Her hair is shiny and tied in a neat bun on her round head. I am like a small, rotten boat with a leak, bobbing in the water under the hulk of a luxury liner.

I think she wants me to hug her and I think I want to; at least I wish I were the kind of person who knew how to hug somebody.

Margaret moves around me to get to the other side of the bed. She pulls the quilt back and fluffs the pillows.

In place of physical affection, I say, ‘This is a really beautiful room. Thank you so much.’

‘Good,’ she says, standing close to me again, in a way I thought only people in films did. Is she waiting for me to get undressed in front of her?

‘We were worried it would be too white,’ she says. ‘You don’t think it’s too much like a hospital room?’

I happen to like hospitals and hospital wards and especially hospital beds. I like to have the doctor call on me in the dead of night with a white coat and leather case and I like it when I’m taken to hospital. Nothing compares to the comfort I feel in a hospital bed when a doctor or nurse comes towards me with a stethoscope or a clipboard, and the promise of pills.

The cleaner and whiter the room, the better, as far as I’m concerned. I like hospital gowns too; modesty gowns made of blue tissue paper, the ones that tie up at the back like shoelaces, flimsy, small, disposable and sterilised, cold and nude around the back.

‘No,’ I say, ‘I really love it.’ I yawn, and look around the room for something to hang onto.

Margaret stays still. Her hands hang by her sides without the need to fidget, fold or point. It is as though her body does not exist in the way mine does. Her body is no obstacle, no hindrance. It’s as it should be: a thing for carrying thought, and for converting thought into action.

‘Do you want me to help you to unpack?’ she asks. She wants to see what I own.

‘Thanks,’ I say, so afraid of being touched again, my tin-foil teeth have begun to rattle.

‘You just sit,’ she says. ‘I’ll hang your clothes.’

Why don’t you let me sleep? I want to say. Why don’t you pull back the covers, tuck me in, bring me tea and toast, draw the curtains and make it dark? Don’t you know how difficult it is for me even to stand up straight?

Margaret works slowly, and to put my nervous misery in perspective, I do this thing.

I think of Mawson, the Australian Antarctic explorer. I read a book about him once, about how he had to eat a jelly made from the boiled bones of his sledge dogs so that he wouldn’t starve to death. He ate so much dog liver that he got vitamin A poisoning, which causes desquamation, which in turn causes the skin to peel off in sheets, especially from the hands, feet and genitalia. Mawson had such a bad case of desquamation that the soles of his feet came away and he was forced to strap them back on to keep them from being lost forever.

I stand up, take a bundle of clothes from Margaret, open a drawer and dump them inside. She takes them straight back out from the drawer and rearranges them.

I step back and sit on the bed.

‘Do you know what desquamation is?’ I ask.

Margaret folds my pyjamas and puts them on the end of the bed.

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘I read about it in a book about Antarctic explorers who sometimes perished in the snow. They suffered from desquamation. I just wondered if you knew what it was.’

‘We have an encyclopaedia downstairs. Do you want me to show you?’

Margaret’s a bank manager, but she sounds like a primary school teacher.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Maybe I’ll look it up later. Maybe I should have a little nap now.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘But don’t you want to see the rest of the house and grab a bite to eat before resting?’

‘Oh,’ I say, my eyes burning. ‘Yes.’

Henry sits at the table reading a newspaper and eating an apple. He is healthy and handsome, like Margaret. I don’t know much about healthy people but they seem peculiarly clean and they smell brand new. It will be so much easier to eat in this clean kitchen. Maybe I’ll even start eating breakfast.

‘Do you like your room?’ asks Henry. ‘We were worried it might be a bit small.’

‘No. It’s fine.’ I say. ‘It’s utterly perfect.’

My voice sounds posh, the way I’ve been prac tising. I like how it sounds, slipping itself into the house like a new piece of polished wood furniture across the polished wood floor.

‘You look prettier in real life,’ says Margaret as she opens the fridge and picks an apple from a big, see-through drawer. There are many apples in this drawer. Carrots too.

Henry looks at me.

‘It’s true. Your photos don’t do you justice.’

Margaret holds two apples.

‘You have a very lively and pretty face,’ says Margaret.

‘That’s good,’ I say.

‘We hardly recognised you at the airport you know,’ says Henry, and it feels like they’ve had a meeting to discuss this.

Margaret stands behind Henry and now there are two faces looking at me.

‘Would you like one?’ asks Margaret, holding two apples aloft.

I hate apples. I haven’t grown up with them. I haven’t developed a technique with them and I’m worried about my teeth. I’m wary of hard food.

Within a week of one another, both my sisters lost adult teeth eating hard caramels at the movies. Erin brought her tooth home wrapped in tissue paper. The tooth was wedged in the caramel, bits of melted chocolate like dried blood around the edges, mixed with saliva. My mum said her favourite thing to say (which also happens to be one of my dad’s favourite things to say): ‘You made your bed and now you’d better lie in it.’

‘But, Mum,’ said Erin, ‘I can’t walk around with a big black hole in my mouth.’

‘Why not?’ I

Reviews for How the Light Gets In

[safetygirl_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

australian teen comes to america as an exchange student to escape her lower class family. living with an upper middle class family in a chicago suburb seems perfect at first, but lou just can't seem to be the good girl she and everyone else wants her to be.

[escondidolibrary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Australian teen, Lou, comes to America as an exchange student to escape her lower class family. Living with an upper middle class family in a Chicago suburb seems perfect at first, but Lou just can't seem to be the good girl she & everyone else wants her to be.

[djupstrom · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kind of like a female, modern Catcher in the Rye, but without the cleverness. It was just alright.

[cecilturtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lou is a decidedly unlikable character: self-centered, disrespectful, unaware and withdrawn. In other words, she is a typical teenager, seeing life through her narrow lens and unable to open her eyes to the impacts of her own actions, only the impacts of others unto her. She has reason to have a chip of her shoulder, but so concentrated is she on her own perceptions and goals that she fails to see how she sabotages herself.It is only in second part of the story, when she is finally able to connect to Gita and Lishny that she realizes that she is not alone - and thus the light starts to get in. She learns her final lesson when she, herself, becomes a victim of someone else's selfish act.This is what makes this book so interesting and compelling: young Lou, who is far from perfect and still has so much to learn, does change even in an infinitesimal way to grow toward adulthood. The quintessential coming of age novel.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[coolmama_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was drawn into this absorbing first novel by MJ Hyland.It tells the story of Lou Conner, a brilliant 16 yr old who leaves her poverty striken home in Sydney and gets places in a one year exchange program in a suburb of Chicago. Told from Lou's point of view, she is a brash, self-destructive, hormone fueled teen. Her host family is odd, especially from her lens. The father is always crying, the mother loves to hug others, she is ignored by the snotty daughter, and the son borders (or not?) on sexual abuse. I am still trying to work out the ending.

[lost_in_pages · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book immensely, but less for the story, characters, or conclusion than for the writing. Lou's perspective is so often thought provoking. She isn't necessarily right, yet her assessments ring true clearly with some things while she appears oblivious about others. It is stated that Lou has a high IQ, yet she fails to be smart over and over again in the ways that would benefit her, more out of childish beliefs than due to self-destructive impulses. Hyland captures that contrast in a way that is fair and believable.Several times while reading, I paused to savor a passage or paragraph. I laughed often with pleasure at this novel's wit. It has a crushingly bitter ending, however, managing to be both inevitable and unexpected at the same time.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Gave up on reading this. Not well written, in my opinion. Characters were caricatures without depth. Unrealistic situations. Why bother reading?