How the Light gets in is a book by M.J. Hyland and is beautiful, heartbreaking and utterly relatable. Lou is a teenage exchange student from a life of poverty and emotional abuse from Sydney coming to live in a suburb of Chicago with the Harding family. She wants to fit in and be loved but she gets in her own way. It's a cross between Catcher in the Rye, the Bell Jar and perfection. It makes you feel peaceful and warm and sad all at once without detaching itself from the reader and when you finish you feel you can lie for hours without having to think about anything.
The plot isn't really very fast moving but it still manages to keep the reader engaged through dialogue and various flashbacks to her past life. There is also a conflict within the family, whether they trust her or their own children and this trust plays a huge part in the complications of the family. It doesn't help that Lou compulsively lies to try to seem more impressive.
There is a large theme of needing to stay in America because of this unrealistic dream that America will boost her quality of life.I think that is one of the problems with the American Dream, it gives outsiders an unrealistic view of America. As a British citizen I know a lot of people, especially young people, think of the US as this knight in shining armour because we're not shown what it's like to live in Pitsburg or a small town in New Mexico. We're shown New York. We're shown LA. We're shown glamourous cities where the streets are paved with stars and a place where people like the Kardashians can get famous and wealthy. We're shown success. Obama symbolised hope in a way Nick Clegg just doesn't. We're taught at a young age from the media that America is full of rich, beautiful people who follow their dreams and they come true. How the Light gets in shows up the messy, complicated dream.
The characters are possibly the strongest point of the book. They are all real people and you can imagine this being a biography because these people are so well created. With book characters they can often be two dimensional but Hyland makes these characters much more complex. For example, the characters can be frustrated. In lots of books authors seem to forget about frustration because it isn't as strong as anger. The characters have real relationships especially the marriage in the book. There's comflict and unnamoty at the same time. Relationships are not good or bad.
Overall I would really recommend How the Light gets in (for one thing the cover is stunning frankly) because it's beautiful. Buy this book.
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