Book Review: Carry Me Down

My sister recommended MJ Hyland’s Carry Me Down after I finished Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves last year. She described it like this:

House of Leaves is truly unique, but at times it seems like the author is exploring new writing styles just because he can – more for the gimmick than for the act of telling the story. Carry Me Down is just as unique in its main character and the means of the story, but it never feels forced or fake.

I didn’t read the book right away because it wasn’t available on Kindle. Thankfully, there’s a really handy website called Mysteria which will regularly ping Amazon to see if they have the book you want converted as ebook. Conveniently, Mysteria e-mailed me about Carry Me Down on Thursday just before my flight. I promptly downloaded the book and read it on my westward journey.

Nothing makes a flight more enjoyable than a good book to read. And mostly, I agree with Alicia’s opinion above. Carry Me Down never felt forced and it had a subject matter that was very clever and mostly untouched in the literary world. That said, I don’t think you would ever want to put Carry Me Down and House of Leaves in the same sentence let alone the same bookshelf. House of Leaves is a suspenseful book whose subject matter steps far into the paranormal – Carry Me Down is just a story about a boy. There are no endless hallways or monsters lurking out of view, it’s just decent story telling.

It’s a pretty short book too which is nice. I read it in about 6 hours of flying.

Next up, I’ll be reading Going to Extremes with book enthusiast Tony E. If you’d like to join our impromptu book club, pick the book up and plan on finishing the first 2 chapters by next weekend.

Until then, keep reading!

3 thoughts on “Book Review: Carry Me Down

  • 12/15/2009 at 3:19 am
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    Hey, fyi, the book I compared with House of Leaves was Cloud Atlas

    Reply
  • 12/15/2009 at 9:15 am
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    Innnnteresting. This puts a dramatic hole in my post’s logical progression.

    Reply
  • 12/15/2009 at 6:30 pm
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    Sorry!!! But you see what I mean, right? Cloud Atlas – House of Leaves – stories within stories. But I also did recommend Carry Me Down as just a seriously well written book.

    Reply

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