How the Light Gets In
by By Hyland, M. J.
Category: Fiction , Literary

Lou Connor, a precocious, gifted, and unhappy sixteen-year-old, is offered a place as an exchange student in the United States, something that she hopes will take her far away from her bleak life of poverty in Sydney, Australia. Having endured a childhood with an emotionally crass, deadbeat family, she welcomes the opportunity to live the middle-class life she has long dreamed of. But soon after she moves in with her host family, the Hardings - who live in a prefabricated mansion in a nameless Chicago suburb - Lou's acute need for acceptance and love runs up against the Hardings' suffocating pursuit of a particular form of suburban perfection.How the Light Gets In is a portrait of a girl on the verge of adulthood whose world - like Holden Caulfield's before her - is full of mixed messages.