Author Description

Product DescriptionLou Connor, a gifted, unhappy 16-year-old, is desperate to escape her life of poverty in Sydney. And when she is offered a place in an exchange student program at an American college, it seems as if her dreams are going to be fulfilled. Her host family, the Hardings, have a large and beautiful house in Illinois and couldn’t be more welcoming. Everything is perfect. Until she starts feeling suffocated by the repressive atmosphere of the Harding’s suburban mansion…How the Light Gets In is an acutely observed story of adolescence and one that evokes American Beauty in its dissection of ingrained prejudices and middle-class hypocrisy. And in Lou Connor, M.J. Hyland has created a larger-than-life protagonist who mesmerizes the reader with her vivacity and vulnerability, from hopeful beginning to unexpected, haunting end.About the AuthorM. J. HYLAND was born in London in 1968 to Irish parents and spent her early childhood in Dublin. She studied law and English at the University of Melbourne and worked for several years as a lawyer. Her first novel, How the Light Gets In, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Eurasia Region) and for The Age Book of the Year in Australia and, in 2004, she was named Young Australian Writer of the Year.How the Light Gets In also took third place in the 2004 Barnes & Noble Discover Award for fiction. M. J. Hyland lives in London, England.