How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Dec. 26th, 2009 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Fifteen-year-old New Yorker Daisy thinks she knows all about love. Her mother died giving birth to her, and now her dad has sent her away for the summer, to live in the English countryside with cousins she’s never even met.
There she’ll discover what real love is: something violent, mysterious and wonderful. There her world will be turned upside down and a perfect summer will explode into a million bewildering pieces.
How will Daisy live then?
Set in the near future where the news is filled with talk of war, 15-year-old Daisy is sent to England to live with her cousins. Outwardly cynical and tough, Daisy suffers from an eating disorder and clearly has issues following her father’s marriage to a step-mother she despises. Her life changes forever though when she is met at the airport by her cousin Edmond, a boy with whom she shares an instant connection, who brings her to her aunt’s house in the country. There she bonds with her other cousins Isaac (Edmond’s twin) and Piper and Osbert and finds happiness for the first time. However, shortly after Daisy’s aunt goes to Norway for peace talks, the cousins’ idyll is spoilt by the outbreak of war and the five cousins find their lives thrown into chaos.
This is a difficult book to describe in that it’s set in a speculative future but has supernatural undertones. These are incidental points to the main story however, which explores Daisy, her reactions to the events overtaking her and the relationship that she has with Edmond. It’s Daisy’s narration that makes the novel utterly beguiling – her dry sense of humour and ironic commentary work to illuminate events but at the same time cannot prevent her vulnerability from seeping through the cracks.
Edmond is a mysterious character – possessing a strange cool and an ability to know what Daisy is thinking. His twin Isaac has a similar uncanny ability to understand animals while 9 year old Piper is a font of knowledge about countryside lore. By contrast, Osbert is more of a cipher, there to move the plot along.
The story moves along quickly and while it would have been interesting for some events – notably details about the war and the circumstances leading to it – to be drawn out, given the focus of the story it isn’t a problem until the final couple of chapters where there is a time jump that’s perhaps a little too abrupt and left too many questions.
That said, this is an extraordinarily accomplished novel, the more so given that it was Rosoff’s debut. Although it’s aimed at the young adult market, it’s a novel with a lot of cross-over appeal (evidenced through its many nominations).
The Verdict:
Winner of the Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers, the Whitbread Children’s Book Prize and the Children’s Book of the Year at the British Book Awards, this is a beautifully told novel about a young girl having to deal with awful circumstances.
Fifteen-year-old New Yorker Daisy thinks she knows all about love. Her mother died giving birth to her, and now her dad has sent her away for the summer, to live in the English countryside with cousins she’s never even met.
There she’ll discover what real love is: something violent, mysterious and wonderful. There her world will be turned upside down and a perfect summer will explode into a million bewildering pieces.
How will Daisy live then?
Set in the near future where the news is filled with talk of war, 15-year-old Daisy is sent to England to live with her cousins. Outwardly cynical and tough, Daisy suffers from an eating disorder and clearly has issues following her father’s marriage to a step-mother she despises. Her life changes forever though when she is met at the airport by her cousin Edmond, a boy with whom she shares an instant connection, who brings her to her aunt’s house in the country. There she bonds with her other cousins Isaac (Edmond’s twin) and Piper and Osbert and finds happiness for the first time. However, shortly after Daisy’s aunt goes to Norway for peace talks, the cousins’ idyll is spoilt by the outbreak of war and the five cousins find their lives thrown into chaos.
This is a difficult book to describe in that it’s set in a speculative future but has supernatural undertones. These are incidental points to the main story however, which explores Daisy, her reactions to the events overtaking her and the relationship that she has with Edmond. It’s Daisy’s narration that makes the novel utterly beguiling – her dry sense of humour and ironic commentary work to illuminate events but at the same time cannot prevent her vulnerability from seeping through the cracks.
Edmond is a mysterious character – possessing a strange cool and an ability to know what Daisy is thinking. His twin Isaac has a similar uncanny ability to understand animals while 9 year old Piper is a font of knowledge about countryside lore. By contrast, Osbert is more of a cipher, there to move the plot along.
The story moves along quickly and while it would have been interesting for some events – notably details about the war and the circumstances leading to it – to be drawn out, given the focus of the story it isn’t a problem until the final couple of chapters where there is a time jump that’s perhaps a little too abrupt and left too many questions.
That said, this is an extraordinarily accomplished novel, the more so given that it was Rosoff’s debut. Although it’s aimed at the young adult market, it’s a novel with a lot of cross-over appeal (evidenced through its many nominations).
The Verdict:
Winner of the Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers, the Whitbread Children’s Book Prize and the Children’s Book of the Year at the British Book Awards, this is a beautifully told novel about a young girl having to deal with awful circumstances.
