"How the light gets in" by M.J. Hyland had all kinds of strikes against it.  I hate the word auspicious.  I know what it means, I’ve looked it up in the dictionary several times.  In my experience though, auspicious means that it is something new & different, but the reason it is new & different is because it is craptacular & everyone else had enough sense not to do it.  Plus, when I point out the craptacular-ness of it, people will think I’m a simpleton & will tell me that it is "auspicious".  So when the back cover of this book bragged "International praise for this auspicious debut", I had my doubts.  Then I noticed that there were not one, but two reviews printed right under the word auspicious likening the main character to Holden Caulfield. It’s the story of a 16 year old Australian who becomes a foreign exchange student to get away from her unhappy home life.  She is a lot like Holden Caulfield, but it’s up to you decide whether that is a good thing or not.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.