Online book club discussion re: Carry Me Down

It seems a few people read the book for the London Book Club but were unable to make the meeting, so let's discuss!

Initially, I had a complete identification with John regarding his height.  I was 6 feet by the time I was 13 and I could really understand the challenges that come with looking older than your chronological age when you are that young.  But on the whole, the book didn't move me as much as the previous books had.  And I think that was even though I knew I was reading the story from a child's perspective, I still regarded him as an adult, which might explain a bit of my apathy to him.

Do you think John "told the truth" about his father and his visits to the neighbors upstairs as a way to get his mother to himself?  I kept thinking there was something a bit strange about his relationship with his mother.

It's been weeks since I read it, and I brought it back to the library when I found out we weren't going to the meeting, so bear with me if I am not spot on with remembering it.

I had no problems with regarding him as a child, although it's interesting that in the book he was mistaken for being much older than he was and readers might identify him as an adult as well.  Was it because you felt he was portrayed as older, Karrit, or are you not used to adolescent protagonists?  Was there anyone else who had this problem as well?  Sorry if this is an odd tangent, I just wonder if I missed a huge thematic metaphor.

I think that he told on his father because he felt an overwhelming compulsion to do so and really didn't really consider the consequences (although now I wish I had a copy handy to go over that part of the book).  He was like his own moral compass.  He was the lie detector.  He kept a record of the sins against the code.  He didn't understand why people lied, or what would happen as a consequence of being called upon it. 

Teenagers tend to see things in black and white for morality.  John is sort of at the cusp of entering that stage of development, but he also hasn't thrown off the self-centredness of childhood yet.  And on top of that, he's a little warped (and everyone around him seem a bit messed up as well).

I've actually known someone who was a bit obsessed with truth telling (at least in others).  He was an adult, but I couldn't help thinking of him constantly when I was reading this book.  I don't know if it compounded my discomfort but I couldn't help thinking "Wow, that's probably how that guy was as a kid". 

I had no problems with regarding him as a child, although it's interesting that in the book he was mistaken for being much older than he was and readers might identify him as an adult as well.  Was it because you felt he was portrayed as older, Karrit, or are you not used to adolescent protagonists? ]

A bit of both, I think.  I am not used to adolescent protagonists, but I don't know if that is it entirely.  It did not seem like an 11 year old voice to me, so I kept having to remind myself he was just a kid.

I had a similar interpretation as Moggs did to the question.  This event also led to something I had been pondering - why did John attempt to smother his mother?  Was it another example of him not understanding the consequences of his actions?  Did he not realise what he was doing up to a point?  Did he ever feel remorse or did he scare himself by what he did?  Why was his mother so forgiving?

Near the end, John's psychologist makes a point that John is very perceptive, but as we've discussed, he doesn't (yet) understand consequences.  What kind of psychological interpretation do we make of John's behaviour? (That is, if anyone has that level of experience or insight - I don't, but could attempt to pop-psychoanalyse him using the DSM-IV - I say "pop" as I'm not a professional in the field myself.)

I really wasn't impressed by this at all.  I'd recently read The Curious Tale of the Dog in the Nightime, so perhaps I was spoiled a bit, but I just didn't think that it was realistically a boy narrating.  I didn't find the story particularly compelling, and there were too many questions unanswered.  I didn't find the characters at all interesting, and I didn't really care about them either.

Right, I've be wanting to get that out of my system for weeks!

The main question of why he tried to kill his mother is, as you said, left unanswered.  I am not sure if he realised it was going to kill her, if he really wanted to help her, or what his motivation was at all.  His relationship with him mum was strange, but so was the relationship with the father, and with no explanation.  I can't work out if he iknew what he was doinjg when he told his mum about the dad's affair - sometimes he seemed innocent and other times less so, and there didn't seem to be any coherence to this.

Vicky

I read an interview with the author that others might find interesting:

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/als/_maria_j_hyland_carry_me_down.html

She wrote much of the first draft of the book with John being an adult, and it wasn't until she was working on a flashback scene (the one about the kittens), that she decided to write it from his perspective as a child.

I sort of thought about Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse a bit after reading this.  But being a film, there was enough distance that you could relate more easily to the protagonist.  And while uncomfortable, most people I know really could at least feel sympathy for the lead character in that film.  She was weird and slightly creepy, but you could see things pretty well from her point of view.

But these sort of characters aren't used often in either literature or film, at least not seriously.  Personally, I think it's not because they make us uncomfortable.  Most of us can handle being made uncomfortable by art so long as it deals with things that we have a handle on.  I think it's because of what it makes us feel uncomfortable about.  Have any of us dealt with the feelings of awkwardness we all felt to a certain extent, or did we just grow out of them?  Deep down, it's not too hard to tap into those feelings if nudged in the right direction.  Of course, John is like a magnification of all that, and probably none of us were quite as awkward as he was.

I am not saying I loved this book.  I didn't.  I probably won't recommend it to people (although I did love Welcome to the Dollhouse and do recommend it to people who haven't seen it).  But I am not sorry I read it.  I agree with Vicky in that I don't think she pulled this off brilliantly, and I think there was a potential for brilliance here.

I really wasn't impressed by this at all.  I'd recently read The Curious Tale of the Dog in the Nightime, so perhaps I was spoiled a bit.

Ha! How funny is that, but I was thinking exactly of that book as an example of an author getting the voice of a young boy right. I was even in the process of posting it but wanted to look up the name of the author first. GMTA, I guess.

Like you and Karrit, I also had to constantly jerk myself back to the fact that he was just a kid: I kept forgetting.

I also thought that being an only child affected his relationship with his parents.    I have 2 brothers and one sister, so we were the kids and my parents were the adults.  As a kid, I related more to my siblings than to my parents. There doesn't seem to be that same kind line drawn in John's relationship to his parents, hence his kind of strange relationship with his mother.  I think not having brothers and sisters at a time when most families in Ireland had at least 4 kids would seem isolating, (I know not good to make generalizations )and he does seem to have a hard time relating to other kids.

Am I right that his mother made a comment at one point about not wanting another child after him?  Was that ever expanded on?

Vicky

Sort of. John later overhears his aunt say something along the lines of "good thing you weren't able to have any more". I already returned the book to the library so I'm sorry I can't be more precise. 

Yes, on pp. 212-213 (paperback), Aunty Evelyn gets a bit catty and makes an underhanded remark about it being a "blessing in disguise" that they "couldn't have more" than one child.

John confronts his mother about this and asks why she said that his parents could only have one child (rather than it being a choice as his mother had previously told him).  John's mother tries to explain it away as Aunty Evelyn being angry at his father and not being able to think straight.  John insists that Aunty Evelyn "meant something terrible by saying it."

I read an interview with the author that others might find interesting:

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/als/_maria_j_hyland_carry_me_down.html

She wrote much of the first draft of the book with John being an adult, and it wasn't until she was working on a flashback scene (the one about the kittens), that she decided to write it from his perspective as a child.

Thanks for posting that, Moggs - I found it very insightful.  I had done a bit of research looking at book reviews and such, but I had not found the interview you posted, which I think shed a lot of light on the book.

As I had finished reading it a few weeks before the book club, I tried to skim through it quickly on the way to Mestizo.  I didn't manage to get very far in the re-read, but I did pick up a few bits that made me realise the book would mean a lot more given a second reading, which I now plan to do.  In the bits that I did manage to re-read, it struck me as one of those "Usual Suspects/Sixth Sense" type of situations whereby knowing how the whole thing unfolds makes it mean a lot more to go back through it a second time with that understanding in mind.

Also, having been an English lit major, I learned how (or was perhaps naturally inclined) to suspend disbelief and get past aspects such as the narrator not being believable as an 11 year old boy - although I did make that observation, it never bothered me to the point of distraction or detraction from what the book had to offer on its other merits.