How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Rosoff, Meg. 2004. How I Live Now. New York, NY: Random House Children's Books. ISBN-13: 9780641960147.
Expect to be drawn in so quickly by Daisy's unassuming personality and frank storytelling style that you will have finished the book before you get up from your chair. With little punctuation hindering 15-year-old Daisy's voice, images and impressions move fluidly from words to ideas. Rosoff's quick and succinct characterizations have you feeling as Daisy, that you have known each of the cousins your whole life and shared their ambling farm home from day one. Quite the contrary. Escaping from an unhappy home life, Daisy leaves the confines of New York behind for the peaceful English countryside and welcoming strangers - Aunt Penn, cousins Osbert, Isaac, Edmond, Piper, two dogs, a goat, sheep, cats, and chickens. Daisy is pleasantly surprised by the freedoms enjoyed by the cousins. Aunt Penn is rarely home, the only homeschooling that takes places is reading for pleasure, 14-year-olds can drive jeeps without seatbelts, and fishing is an all-day affair. In the few weeks before the war starts, life is bliss. Page by page, though, the war comes closer and closer to the cousins. With Aunt Penn stranded in Oslo after a bombing, changes start taking place. The cousins move into the lambing barn, so as to be less visible to The Enemy, and start collecting provisions - including a Boy Scout Survival Guide. Officially-dressed people begin to knock on the door and ask questions, food lines open, quarantines are issued, and 16-year-old Osbert joins the War Effort. In the unique position of understanding, and yet not understanding, Daisy is often perceptive and at times very naive. Through candid narration, we experience a love affair, a powerfully symbiotic friendship with 9-year-old Piper, the atrocities of war, and human survival. 'We couldn't go on. We went on.' The last section of the book is startling and somber. In a voice changed by age and circumstance, Daisy's 21-year-old words are no longer melodious. Instead they are weighed down with grief, unknowing, sadness, and punctuation. Closure comes painfully for Daisy and her readers as she reunites with the most important people in her life after six years of anguishing post-war separation. Rosoff is remarkable in her ability to fashion stylistically moving narration and capture the essence of so many human sensibilities. A modern classic...
"Manhattanite Daisy, 15, moves to London to stay with an aunt and cousins she's never met. Without preamble or fanfare, an unidentified enemy attacks and war ensues. Her aunt is abroad on a peace mission, meaning that Daisy and her three cousins, with whom she forges a remarkable relationship, must survive almost entirely on their own. This is a very relatable contemporary story, told in honest, raw first-person and filled with humor, love, pathos, and carnage. War, as it will, changes these young people irrevocably, not necessarily for the worse. They and readers know that no one will ever be the same. The story of Daisy and her three exceptional cousins, one of whom becomes her first lover, offers a keen perspective on human courage and resilience. An epilogue, set six years after the conclusion, while war still lingers, ends Daisy's story on a bittersweet, hopeful note."
Kirkus Reviews; July 15, 2004, Vol. 72 Issue 14.
"Rosoff's debut novel, set in a war-torn, alternate modern-day England, is an incredible tale of two teens and the intensity of their forbidden bond. When fifteen-year-old Daisy arrives in England, her fourteen-year-old cousin Edmond picks her up from the airport. A connection immediately forms, with Edmond seeming to hear Daisy's very thoughts. Daisy's other cousins include Isaac, who speaks only to animals; nine-year-old Piper, who views the world through solemn adult eyes; and Osbert, the older son often in charge of the family. When world war erupts, England is invaded and the British Army commandeers the family farm, placing the boys on another farm and Daisy and Piper with a military family. The emotional bond between Daisy and Edmond is so strong that Daisy can sense him lying beside her at night although they are apart. Tragedy ensues, but eventually Daisy and Piper find their way to the boys' farm where they discover a field of decaying bodies. Not knowing the boys' fate, Daisy and Piper return to the deserted family farm. Startled by the telephone ringing, Daisy answers and hears her father's voice. Against her will, Daisy is taken back to New York. Six years later Daisy returns to an angry Edmond, both physically and emotionally scarred by her desertion. The depth and starkness of Rosoff's writing is beautiful yet painful to read. This book about the emotional devastation of war raises the hair on a reader's arms and brings tears to one's eyes. Suggest this one to readers who loved Alice Hoffmann's Green Angel (Scholastic, 2003/VOYA April 2003)."
-Ruth E. Cox.
Voice of Youth Advocates; December 01, 2004.
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