This incisive scene is emblematic of Hyland’s fiction: her narrators, puzzled by the world, are dissociated from those around them. Lacking the necessary social skills, they become warped and introverted, often with terrible consequences. This was the case in Hyland’s début novel, How the Light Gets In (2003). Lou, a sixteen-year-old misanthropic wunderkind, is completely alienated from her working-class world (a milieu to which Hyland, it must be said, seems rather hostile) and longs to escape. But in winning a place in an American exchange program, Lou simply trades one form of alienation for another. Her host family fails to understand her solipsism and antisocial behaviour, and Lou, averse to responsibility, spirals into an alcoholic nightmare.

Similarly out of touch is John Egan, that ‘odd mixture’ of ‘little boy and a grown lad’, of Hyland’s acclaimed Carry Me Down (2006). John, though gauche, is a well-meaning child; we are more sympathetic to his private conflicts. But like Lou, his aversion to the realities of life (he convinces himself that he is a human lie detector) brings devastation to his family.

Patrick, a young man in his early twenties, is not dissimilar in nature. When his fiancée breaks off their engagement, he runs away from home to a boarding house in a seaside town. The other, improbable lodgers at Vauxhall Street are Flindall, an architect with ‘a posh London accent’, and Welkin, an actuary on sabbatical, who has ‘the kind of eyes girls love so much. And he’s got a tan.’ Their landlady, the widowed Bridget, is sweet and affectionate – especially to Welkin. She is more reserved around Patrick, and he vies for her attention.

Initially, Patrick’s relocation is promising. He immediately finds work as a trained mechanic. Flindall and Welkin are friendly and inclusive, though Patrick resists their congeniality. He fancies the waitress at the local café and intends to ask her out. But the unexpected arrival of his mother upsets Patrick’s ne w equilibrium and threatens his precious independence. The visit exposes Patrick’s ambivalent relationship with his family – notably his father – and the lingering indignity of his failed tertiary studies. It also stokes Patrick’s violent tendencies.

It is difficult to provide more detail about the narrative without giving too much away. The first part of This Is How concludes with a simple, shocking act (described with typically brusque detachment), the consequences of which reverberate throughout the rest of the novel.

Hyland is adroit at depicting ordinary people in their domestic surroundings. Within such mundanity, however, their failings are quietly spectacular. Hyland has the authorial knack of burrowing deep into a disturbed interiority. Her narrators inhabit a mental landscape that is, at times, uncomfortably familiar; Patrick’s is wishful thinking at its most extreme. Take, for example, his musings towards the end of the novel:

If Dr Forbes stood now and went to the door I’d follow her and we’d go down the hall and nobody would stop us because she’d tell them not to follow us [...] We’d get in her car and drive to the sea and on the way we’d stop at a roadside café and in the car I’d put my hand on her leg just above where the hem of the skirt is.

This passage exemplifies Patrick’s indiscriminate rambling. He is a daydreamer, eager to believe in these fancies; there is no one to rationalise with this loner. While not a victim of circumstance, Patrick is not a bad man, either. He reminded me of John Fowles’s Frederick Clegg, in The Collector, but without the malignity: both men’s delusions prompt sinister and ineffective attempts at goodwill.

‘Life’s shrinking to a size that fits me best,’ Patrick muses, revealing the pathos at the heart of the novel, but also his cocoon of insensibility. He never really repents of his wrongdoings. In this deliberate evasion, Hyland interrogates some recurrent motifs in her fiction: culpability, morality and human responsibility. The closest Patrick comes to accountability is extemporised: ‘Whenever I think of what’s gone on, a constant and repetitive chain of thoughts, it’s the desperate feeling of embarrassment that gets me most upset [...] I turn red, a hot and raging shame crawls over my skin and it sickens me.’ Yet for all his introversion, Patrick never analyses his own desires or motivations. While seeking to move closer to other people (which he does succeed in doing, eventually), he is unwilling to take further steps to know himself, a requisite in his social rehabilitation.

In a series of genuinely traumatic events, Hyland’s tone rarely moderates. She relies on constant momentum and a sense of claustrophobia. Like the withered hopes and dreams of her narrators, there is no culmination to This Is How, no epiphany, no resolution.

Patrick Oxtoby is sure to resonate with audiences. But there is a sameness about his character that will disappoint some readers. Hyland has not ventured far from safe territory and once again navigates that bewildered interiority that has become her trademark. Familiar, too, is the grim, grey social milieu. It would have been good to read a more strenuous examination of this world, about which Hyland is clearly equivocal, and to learn how this contributes to Patrick’s development; but this element remains ill defined, and as with How the Light Gets In leaves an impression of superciliousness which may be unintended.

The novel is overlong; some scenes, particularly in the second half, feel padded, which is odd, since Hyland is so adept at spare revelations in dialogue, gesture and moments of ambivalent intimacy. But these are minor qualms in what is a polished, provocative and deeply troubling work. The content may be familiar, but so much the better, for Hyland has conquered the ghastly, compelling subjectivity of clever people unable to integrate socially. This Is How is a novel of discomfiting human truths.