April 2011: This is How

When his fiance breaks off their engagement, Patrick Oxtoby leaves home and moves into a boarding house in a remote seaside town. But in spite of his hopes and determination to build a better life, nothing goes to plan and Patrick is soon driven to take a desperate and chilling course of action. “This is How” is a mesmerising and meticulously drawn portrait of a man whose unease in the world leads to his tragic undoing. With breathtaking wisdom and an astute insight into the human mind, award-winning M.J. Hyland’s new book is a masterpiece that inspires horror and sympathy in equal measure.

‘M.J. Hyland has a ferocious imagination, and an eerie way of squeezing the distance between author, character and reader, so that the atmosphere of the book soaks and penetrates the reader’s mind. When you’ve been reading Hyland, other writers seem to lack integrity; they seem wedded to weak confabulations, whereas she aims straight for the truth and the heart.’ Hilary Mantel

About the Author

MJ Hyland was born in London to Irish parents in 1968. She studied law and English at the University of Melbourne, and is the author of two previous novels, HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN, and CARRY ME DOWN, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006 and winner of the Hawthornden Prize. Hyland now lives in Manchester.

The Verdict

Well, this one caused a huge amount of thought-provoking discussion, mainly focusing on the character of Patrick and the question of why he does what he does. He certainly provoked some very strong reactions. Many people found him to be  an extremely unsympathetic and unnerving central character and were left feeling “so what?” about the book; others recognised Patrick as a troubled and perhaps “ill” young man, discussing his thinking patterns as typical of those diagnosed autistic or with Aspergers Syndrome. This lead on to a discussion about authorial intention (were these conditions in the authors mind when she wrote it? and, if so, why were they not mentioned?), whether we need to “pin down” what is wrong with someone to understand them, the “medicalisation” of bad behaviour and the terrible loneliness of suffering from an “invisible” condition which places you outside of the mainstream. Whatever the initial viewpoint, I feel it was a discussion that we all came away from feeling like we had thought long and deep and had arrived in an altogether more enlightened place.