What I Was by Meg Rosoff
Dec. 29th, 2009 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Shall I tell you about the year I discovered love?
I’d been kicked out of two boarding schools and the last thing I wanted was to be here, on the East Anglian coast in a third.
But without St Oswald’s, I would not have discovered the fisherman’s hut with its roaring fire, its striped blankets, its sea monster stew.
Without St Oswald’s, I would not have met the boy with the beautiful eyes, the flickering half-smile and no past.
Without St Oswald’s. I would not have met Finn.
And without Finn, there would be no story.
Shall we begin?
WHAT I WAS is narrated by an unnamed old man, looking back on what happened to him as a schoolboy when he was sent to St Oswald’s boarding school in East Anglia in 1962.
The narrator is an underachiever with no interest in St Oswald’s, which is his parents’ last ditch attempt to secure a half-decent education. Despite the somewhat creepy and fawning attempts of Reese, another student, to befriend him, the narrator is content to go his own way until the day he finds a small fisherman’s hut on the beach while out in a cross-country run. The hut belongs to Finn, a teenage boy who lives under the radar of the authorities, working for the local town market and educating himself with books left to him by his grandmother.
Despite Finn’s ambiguous attitude towards the narrator’s attention, the two soon form a strange friendship, but this isn’t really enough for the narrator who is obsessed with Finn and his lifestyle. Things come to a head during a storm, when the narrator discovers some unpleasant facts and tragedy results from the same.
This is a strange story about obsession and despites the strong homosexual undertone, homosexuality is a theme that never really gets developed – indeed, although the narrator himself jokes about buggery in an all-male boarding school, he himself stresses that he does not think of himself as gay.
As a character study, I didn’t quite find myself believing in the narrator or his situation, mainly because he doesn’t explain a great deal about himself. There is even less information about Finn himself and I’d have liked to have known more about what draws the narrator to him. There is a big twist at the end, which I won’t spoil but which I had guessed about half-way through and it’s a shame that Rosoff doesn’t really go into what happens afterwards, dealing with the effects off-page.
Rosoff does well with the sense of period, although there is one reference to Carry On films which, given the time period and the context, didn’t quite convince. The quality of the writing though is excellent, with Rosoff’s descriptions proving rich and evocative and fully justifying the novel’s award nominations.
All in all, while this is a book that doesn’t quite come off it’s still a worthwhile read, if only because Rosoff’s writing is beautiful.
The Verdict:
Nominated for a Costa Book Award, this is a brave novel that tackles homosexuality and yet doesn’t quite come off – mainly because the narrator needs slightly more fleshing out and Rosoff doesn’t quite delve into the homosexual undertones. Despite this, the quality of writing is excellent and the descriptions evocative.
I’d been kicked out of two boarding schools and the last thing I wanted was to be here, on the East Anglian coast in a third.
But without St Oswald’s, I would not have discovered the fisherman’s hut with its roaring fire, its striped blankets, its sea monster stew.
Without St Oswald’s, I would not have met the boy with the beautiful eyes, the flickering half-smile and no past.
Without St Oswald’s. I would not have met Finn.
And without Finn, there would be no story.
Shall we begin?
WHAT I WAS is narrated by an unnamed old man, looking back on what happened to him as a schoolboy when he was sent to St Oswald’s boarding school in East Anglia in 1962.
The narrator is an underachiever with no interest in St Oswald’s, which is his parents’ last ditch attempt to secure a half-decent education. Despite the somewhat creepy and fawning attempts of Reese, another student, to befriend him, the narrator is content to go his own way until the day he finds a small fisherman’s hut on the beach while out in a cross-country run. The hut belongs to Finn, a teenage boy who lives under the radar of the authorities, working for the local town market and educating himself with books left to him by his grandmother.
Despite Finn’s ambiguous attitude towards the narrator’s attention, the two soon form a strange friendship, but this isn’t really enough for the narrator who is obsessed with Finn and his lifestyle. Things come to a head during a storm, when the narrator discovers some unpleasant facts and tragedy results from the same.
This is a strange story about obsession and despites the strong homosexual undertone, homosexuality is a theme that never really gets developed – indeed, although the narrator himself jokes about buggery in an all-male boarding school, he himself stresses that he does not think of himself as gay.
As a character study, I didn’t quite find myself believing in the narrator or his situation, mainly because he doesn’t explain a great deal about himself. There is even less information about Finn himself and I’d have liked to have known more about what draws the narrator to him. There is a big twist at the end, which I won’t spoil but which I had guessed about half-way through and it’s a shame that Rosoff doesn’t really go into what happens afterwards, dealing with the effects off-page.
Rosoff does well with the sense of period, although there is one reference to Carry On films which, given the time period and the context, didn’t quite convince. The quality of the writing though is excellent, with Rosoff’s descriptions proving rich and evocative and fully justifying the novel’s award nominations.
All in all, while this is a book that doesn’t quite come off it’s still a worthwhile read, if only because Rosoff’s writing is beautiful.
The Verdict:
Nominated for a Costa Book Award, this is a brave novel that tackles homosexuality and yet doesn’t quite come off – mainly because the narrator needs slightly more fleshing out and Rosoff doesn’t quite delve into the homosexual undertones. Despite this, the quality of writing is excellent and the descriptions evocative.
