How the Light Gets In

May 10, 2004
When Louise Connor, a brainy, difficult 16-year-old from Sydney, Australia, travels to Chicago as a foreign exchange student, she wants more than just friendship from her wealthy suburban host family. Desperate for affection and approval-and hoping to permanently escape her real family-she plies her hosts with effusive thank-you notes, but also swigs gin to calm her nerves, with predictable results. How the Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland is a cool, accomplished first novel, originally published to acclaim in Australia; international rights have been sold in five countries, and Hyland will embark on a five-city tour in the U.S.

April 15, 2004
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. Hyland's debut loses momentum as it drifts to its open ending. But 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: "What kind of a moron thinks there's a rational explanation for human behavior?" (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)