Dark days of an Irish childhood

Fiction: Too tall, too intense, John Egan at 11 going on 12 is a boy inside a man's body, speaking with a deep voice.

His father and mother are also tall, childlike and as troubled as their only son. The father is an awkward, petulant individual, too clever to work, and talks about bringing his intelligence to Trinity College. The boy's mother is still beautiful, puts on local puppet shows and tries to make the best out of living with her mother-in-law, in the old lady's cottage in Gorey. Young John, watchful, given to staring and living in his head, tells the story and fixes the reader with a narrative that is compelling, lucid and terrifying.

MJ Hyland's stark second novel is remarkable - unnerving in its tragic candour and urgently precise narrative voice, sustained in the present tense. There are echoes of Pat McCabe's The Butcher Boy, yet she brilliantly avoids the grotesque by her mastery of a bewildered tone of wistful longing. Carry Me Down is far more frightening than McCabe's book, far more profound and horrifically real; it recalls the open-eyes horror of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Set in Wexford and Dublin, Carry Me Down unfolds before our eyes. It is a taut, at times violent, but always thoughtful study of three people, a small family, attempting to survive, as told by one of them. "It is January, a dark Sunday in winter, and I sit with my mother and father at the kitchen table." That simple statement serves as an overture for the intensely, carefully described narrative that is to follow. Young John dreams of normality. It proves elusive, probably because there is no normality - the normal invariably borders on the surreal.

Early in life, he has been set apart, initially as the only child of handsome parents, but increasingly by his appearance - his height is now making him a target. His mother has decided to focus all her fears, all her unhappiness on her boy, with whom she has had an intense bond. Meanwhile her husband, the boy's father, is battling his own demons, which manifest themselves in his alarming mood swings. If a writer can be described as not putting a foot wrong, and never missing a note, it is Hyland, born in London of Irish parents, and apparently honed in Australia as a writer, in this outstanding, low-key "sleeper" second novel, which has been long-listed for this year's Man Booker prize. It should make the shortlist; it could challenge the obvious frontrunner, Howard Jacobson; it might even win.

John Egan, whose small hopes reside in his ongoing examination of the Guinness Book of Records, studies the world through a hypersensitive intelligence. He watches his mother. "Her face is flushed, down to her neck, and her eyes are wide and blue. She looks nicest when she comes home from working on her puppet shows, and I know that she will never get too old or ugly and will never look like Granny." John wants to become famous, he believes his hope of fame lies somewhere among the records. Finally he settles on his future: he will become a detector of lies. Truth and lies makes up his dying life, and for him, his father becomes his training ground.

The characterisation of the father is one of Hyland's major achievements, in a novel in which even the violence is handled with a subtle, thoughtful balance. He is trapped by his frustrations. Snappy and unpredictable, he makes life difficult for his wife, who is beginning to fret about losing her beauty.

Meanwhile, their son has lost the self-absorption of early childhood and is now watching faces, interpreting body language and, through his pursuit of the lies told by others, is beginning to tell some of his own. In one of several devastating, violent set-pieces, young John assists his father in the disposal of a litter of unwanted kittens. It is presented as a test of manhood - will young John fail? The murder takes place in the bathroom.

Father fills the bath. The planned drowning fails. "The water mustn't've been hot enough," declares the father. John seizes on their surviving the ordeal as a sign. "Quick," I say. "Let them out." It is the crucial turning point in the book, and in the boy's relationship with his volatile father, who makes promises he doesn't keep. Hyland does not flinch, yet remains plausible.

"My father turns to me, takes a kitten in his hand, swings it over his shoulder, and smashes its head against the edge of the bath. The sound of the skull cracking is loud and sharp; like a ruler being snapped in half." The father then proceeds to tell his son that this is the way of nature. "I look carefully at him and something happens. I know - I am certain - he is lying."

Each experience is stored in the boy's memory. There is also the ongoing awareness he has of an abandoned doll, stuck on a tree. He sees the doll on his way to school each day. "She is wedged right in the crook of two branches, about ten feet up, and out of reach; she has been there for years, ever since I started at the Gorey National School. Her dress is faded and some of the skin on her hands and arms is black, as though she has frostbite."

John Egan's world begins to collapse. His friend Brendan turns away from him. An embarrassing accident at school sets him further apart. His humiliation is prolonged by the arrival of a new girl, who quickly reveals a flair for bullying. This is countered by a extraordinary demonstration by a teacher, fresh from Dublin, who takes on the bully. "It's the likes of you who make the men that rape," he says. "At every school in the country, the killers and madmen are made by bullies like you." The teacher then stage-manages an identical humiliation for the bully and ensures she also urinates in public. One might wonder at the teacher's handling of the incident, and late in the novel it is clear Mr Roche is now employed elsewhere - tutoring privately.

Further tension in the cottage forces the family to move to Dublin, where they settle in a Ballymun tower block. Hyland makes effective use of this piece of social history. The experience forces John's mother into a decline, which he attempts to end for her. More upheaval and a further exploration of fear, rage and love itself. But all of it is handled with pace, deliberation and magisterial control. Convincing, oddly sympathetic and always compelling, this is a novel of dark truths. Whether or not this is an "Irish" novel is irrelevant - it is a fine novel, evoking a recognisable, non-stagy Ireland, and most of all, that bizarre maze known as family.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times

Carry Me Down By MJ Hyland Canongate, 334pp. £9.99