http://newhumanist.i2p/articles/2153/this-is-how-by-mj-hyland
The narrative drive is relentless, surging on and on in the toneless voice of Patrick Oxtoby, Hyland’s protagonist. Oxtoby is twenty-four and likes nothing better than fixing cars – indeed he’s dropped out of university to do so. From a respectable, upper-working-class family, he is the son that can never be happy, his mother smothering him, his father distant.