How I Live Now: Meg Rosoff

Product Information

That was a bomb that went off in the middle of a big train station in London the day after Aunt Penn went to Oslo and something like seven or seventy thousand people got killed. A daring, wise, and sensitive look at the complexities of being young in a world teetering on chaos, Rosoff's poignant exploration of perseverance in the face of the unknown is a timely lesson for us all." - People Magazine How I Live Now is the first-person story of Daisy, a smart, stroppy, self-absorbed 15-year-old who arrives from New York's Upper West Side to stay with her English cousins. The four cousins are romantic, bohemian and enjoy an eccentric, faintly feral pastoral idyll of an existence in a rambling English country house, mystically in touch with nature and, indeed, with Daisy.

a b c d Tilley, Steve (13 September 2013). "Saoirse Ronan loads up again in 'How I Live Now' ". Toronto Sun . Retrieved 21 February 2017. When Aunt Penn leaves for Oslo to help with peace negotiations, the five children are left alone at the old farmhouse. They feel far removed from any conflict, and hear conflicting reports. Warnings of small-pox keep people practically housebound, and idle days lead to an intense relationship between Daisy and her cousin Edmond. How I Live Now also managed to make the short list for the LA Times Book Prize, the Whitbread Children's Book Award, and the Orange First Novel Prize. It's basically the Meryl Streep of YA books—so while cousins do get down and dirty with each other, rest assured that this isn't smut, but smut with a purpose. And here's the thing: The much-talked-about incest of How I Live Now is really tangential to the story of family and survival in a futuristic world war.

Media Reviews

George, Sandy (28 August 2013). "Adelaide Film Festival reveals competition titles". Screen Daily . Retrieved 8 February 2015. The writing is superb, I immersed myself in the streaming consciousness of Daisy’s narration and breathed after 10 hours or so. She is a really, really self-centered narrator. There is a war going on, she doesn't seem to care. Daisy seems more concerned about her own problems and her *womp womp* sad poor-little-rich-girl life than anyone else around her, even when a bomb goes off in London and the world descends into chaos. For the first half of the book, her descriptions of the war and its devastation are described coldly, impersonally, there is no sense of danger, of mortality, of impending doom. Daisy is so detached from it all, in her own egotistical little mind. Leah is Daisy's friend. During Daisy's stay at Aunt Penn's, Leah continually updates Daisy with recent news and events occurring at her school.

It is Daisy's voice - spiky, defiant and vulnerable - that makes this novel; it also ensures that it is so compelling and delightful. Although Daisy can be an unreliable narrator, especially when it comes to things she's not much interested in, such as the details of war, she is also utterly trustworthy. Catsoulis, Jeannette (7 November 2013). "Young Love, Interrupted by a Nuclear Bomb". The New York Times . Retrieved 4 April 2014. My name is Elizabeth but no one’s ever called me that. My father took one look at me when I was born and must have thought I had the face of someone dignified and sad like an old-fashioned queen or a dead person, but what I turned out like is plain, not much there to notice. Even my life so far has been plain. More Daisy than Elizabeth from the word go.

Meg Rosoff has written an impressive novel about war, survival and teenage love. The story is told from the point of view of Daisy, the smart and courageous protagonist. The way in which the story is told and the fact that not much is said about who the enemy is, or why this Third World War has started, really puts the focus on the victims of the conflict and the struggles they face because of it. I had heard high praise of this book - with such a boring cover, I probably wouldn't have read it otherwise. I certainly never noticed it. But it was a hugely disappointing read.

Well to be fair, there is no way I’m believing any of this, being driven along on the wrong side of the road by this skinny kid dragging on a cigarette and let’s face it who wouldn’t be thinking what a weird place England is. stars I'd heard so many raves about this book that I was expecting to be blown away. The idea of a futuristic setting for a historical war type drama sounded intriguing to me, and I wasn't turned off by the controversial topics covered in it, including the kissing cousins. So it's very strange to read the entire novel without feeling a single genuine emotion other than annoyance at both the characters and the plot.

What to know

I did a combined rating of the book and movie, which is something I've never done before. The reason I did this was because directly after reading the book, like I'm talking mere seconds after finishing, I watched this movie. Watching the movie made me appreciate the book more. The book has these amazing moments that I just didn't full grasp until I watched the film. The writing is good, but for most of the book, the author eschews quotation marks and often falls into the same ALL CAPS trap as JK Rowling. Rosoff probably had a point to make, something about the shift between childish self-involvement and the mature outside-focus of an adult, but mostly it came off as pretentious. Assured, powerful, engaging . . . you will want to read everything that Rosoff is capable of writing' - Observer Later when I get a chance to look around the house I find out the inside is much more jumbled up than the outside with funny corridors that don’t seem to lead anywhere and tiny bedrooms with slanty ceilings hidden away at the top of stairs. The stairs all creak and there are no curtains on any of the windows and all the main rooms seem huge after what I’m used to and they’re scattered with big old comfortable furniture and paintings and books and huge fireplaces you can walk into and animals posing around the place to make it look even more authentic oldy worldy.

Beauty tips involving superglue, advice on how to write (and how to be weird), photos of bearded men on a catwalk, and Rosoff's political views. A little something for everyone. The real truth is that the war didn't have much to do with it except that it provided a perfect limbo in which two people who were too young and too related could start kissing without anything or anyone making us stop. (c) The desperation of it just got to me so hard, the crying that I did for dear dear Edmund.... And not just tears down my face, it was a passionate and ugly cry. Stunned me too how much I ended up feeling for these kids.Conventional wisdom states that when cousins get freaky, you're likely to end up with something like this: