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Search - How the Light Gets in
Subjects:Similar Books:
- Little Children - Tom Perrotta
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
- How to Breathe Underwater (Vintage Contemporaries) - Julie Orringer
- Lost in the Forest - Sue Miller
- Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
| ISBN-13: 9781841955483 ISBN-10: 1841955485 Publisher: Canongate Books Publication Date: 5/11/2004 Pages: 320 Book Type: Paperback |
Book Description:
Lou Connor, a gifted but unhappy sixteen-year-old, is desperate to escape her life of poverty in Sydney, Australia. When she is offered a place as an exchange student at a college in Illinois, it seems as if her dreams are going to be fulfilled. Her host family, the Hardings, has a large and beautiful house in Illinois and couldn't be more welcoming. Everything is perfect. Until Lou starts having to live in the suffocating and repressed atmosphere of the Hardings' suburban mansion and things start to go terribly wrong. How the Light Gets In is an acutely observed tale of adolescence. But more than that, it is an intelligent and darkly humorous study of human aspiration, self-sabotage, and the dislocation and alienation felt by an outsider. In Lou Connor, M. J. Hyland has created a complex and unforgettable protagonist who mesmerizes the reader with her vivacity and vulnerability, from hopeful beginning to unexpected, haunting end.
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Rate These Member Reviews
This was the type of book that was very fun to read and easy to imagine as a movie, but at the same time I feel that if it had been a movie I would have liked it more. It also bothered me that Lou is sixteen and is never turned down when she goes out to buy cigarettes or gin. It's little details like that that bother me, and the way this girl is never ever asked for her ID itched in the back of my head while I read this book. Still, it was fun to read.
this is a keeper... very believable told from the perspective of a teenager abroad... good detail and interesting story line...
An interesting story. Easy to love and hate the main character.
Irina D. (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.
Dani R. from KANSAS CITY, MO wrote on 3/26/2006...very well written - an exchange student gone awry but much more. Very clever
This book was a great, fast read! The book itself is a little water logged, as it got snowed on, but is perfectly readable. The story is about a gifted girl trying to get out of her dead end life in Australia by being an exchange student in America. As someone who works with at-risk children, it really spoke to me about how even highly intelligent people cannot easily overcome the damage of poor parenting. Though the ending was a little brusk, I loved this book!