A Freudian portrait of mental anguish

Carry Me Down, by MJ Hyland, Cannongate, €14.60.

The child narrator of Carry Me Down has some obvious fictional forebears: Holden Caulfield, JD Salinger’s prototype disaffected teen, Christopher Boone in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, even Lou Connor, the alienated, solipsistic protagonist of MJ Hyland’s debut novel How the Light Gets In. But John Egan, the precocious, towering misfit who tells this story is unique as well as unforgettable.