Book Summary:In this story, the main character (Daisy), is going to stay with her cousins in England for the summer. Very soon after she gets there, her aunt is called away to work and the kids have the farm to themselves. Shortly after that, a war begins, and suddenly the country is occupied by enemies. At first, the war doesn’t affect them much. Eventually, however, soldiers move in and take over the farm. The kids are split up and sent to different places. Daisy, who has been having an intense relationship with her cousin Edmond, is upset at being separated from him, but remains in telepathic contact with him. Soon the conflict in the area gets worse, and Daisy and her young cousin Piper end up out on their own. They manage to survive, but they see many horrible things. In the end, Daisy gets taken back to America by her father, and years pass before she is able to get back to England to her cousins, where she eventually renews her relationship with Edmond, who has been greatly affected by the war.
APA Reference:Rosoff, Meg. (2004). How I Live Now. New York: Wendy Lamb Books.
My Impressions:
This was a very intense book. The author did a great job of creating this world that these children lived in, that at first seemed very unreal, and then seemed to be suddenly jerked into reality. The feelings of the whole world being torn out from under them felt very real. Things such as the little goat, Ding, when they found him starving in the barn, helped to convey the horror of what had happened. The children did seem a little mature for their ages, but it is possible that the situation could have made them grow up faster than they normally would have. Daisy’s desperate wish to be reunited with Edmond is evident throughout the last half of the book. At times she even tries to get the dog to find him, and everywhere she goes she hopes to find him again. In the end, when she is sent back to the United States without even finding out what happened to him, the reader is left hoping as well that they will find each other again. In the end, when they do meet again, it is not the fairy-tale like ending that one would normally expect. Edmond was a witness to a terrible massacre, and it has left him damaged. He feels abandoned by Daisy, and she has to work hard to get him to speak to her again.The character development in this book is very good, and the author is very good at creating mood with the events of the book. The children are tough, and handle all of the horror quite well. It feels as if it could be real. The story of this romance in the middle of a terrible war is not an uncommon story, but it is done very well here, and is not predictable and stale.
Professional Reviews:
Card, Timnah. (2004, September). [Review of the book How I Live Now, by M. Rosoff]. Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 58(1), p. 37. Retrieved from http://bccb.lis.illinois.edu/
ROSOFF, MEG How I Live Now. Lamb, 2004 [160p]Library ed. ISBN 0-385-90908-X $18.99Trade ed. ISBN 0-385-74677-6 $16.95Reviewed from galleysR* Gr. 9-12After a series of terrorist strikes around the world, protagonist Daisy, a New Yorker who has been sent to England by her father to live with her late mother's relatives, is left alone with her four cousins on their farm. With British peacekeeping forces deployed around the world, enemy forces invade England and settle into an uneasy ceasefire with the British military reserves. Newly engaged in her first sexual relationship (with her cigarette-smoking, Jeep-driving, mind-reading cousin Edmond), Daisy frankly adores the bucolic beauty of Life without Father, until the military reserves take over the property and split up the children. Getting her nine-year-old cousin Piper back to the deserted family farm takes Daisy a couple of months; getting herself back to England after her father has her forcibly removed to the States takes Daisy six more years; finding a way to reconnect with a traumatized Edmond, whose extraordinary sensitivity and caring left him unable to disengage from the wanton destruction of war, takes all the courage and brash New York stubbornness she has. The first three-quarters of Daisy's unapologetic narration is a shockingly funny, disturbingly poignant series of observations in one-sentence, run-on paragraphs involving a believably frequent use of Capital Letters and complete disregard for the conventions of punctuation. Jumping the six years of waiting for the reestablishment of international relations, Daisy picks up the tale upon her return to England, this time using starkly perfect modern prose, a technique which heightens the sense of desperation held firmly in check. Throughout, the paradisiacal setting of the English countryside and the wretched, sometimes horrifyingly violent lives of the embattled people who live there are presented with such luxurious, terrible realism that readers will remain absorbed to the very end by this unforgettable and original story.
Davey, D. (2004, September). [Review of the book How I Live Now, by M. Rosoff]. School Library Journal, 50(9), p. 216. Retrieved from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Douglas P. DaveyROSOFF, Meg. How I live now. 194p. Random/Wendy Lamb Bks. 2004. Tr $16.95. ISBN 0-385-74677-6; PLB $18.99. ISBN 0-385-90908-X. LC number unavailable.Gr 8 Up-Daisy, 15, a troubled New York City teen with a distant father, a wicked (and pregnant) stepmother, and an eating disorder, is sent to England to stay on a rambling farm with her deceased mother's sister's family. It is made up of Aunt Penn "who always has Important Work To Do Related to the Peace Process" and her brood of children: Osbert, 16; 14-year-old twins Isaac and Edmond; and 9-year-old Piper. As the kids spend more and more time together, Daisy warms to them, beginning to tune in to a seemingly psychic bond that the siblings share. When Aunt Penn travels to Oslo, Daisy begins a sexual relationship with Edmond. At the same time, hostile forces invade England. Originally enjoying the freedom of a world that seems to have forgotten them, the cousins are inevitably separated, leaving Piper and Daisy to struggle across the countryside and rejoin the others. Daisy's voice is uneven, being at times teenage vapid, while elsewhere sporting a vocabulary rich with 50-cent words, phrases, and references. In addition, Rosoff barely scratches the surface of the material at hand. At times, this is both intentional and effective (the enemy is never named) but for the most part the dearth of explanation creates insurmountable questions around the basic mechanisms of the plot. There is no explanation of how a small force could take out all communications (including cell phones) and proceed to overrun and to control an entire country. Perhaps even stranger, the ramifications of psychic abilities and underage sexual relationships between first cousins is never addressed.ADDED MATERIALDouglas P. Davey, Halton Hills Public Libraries, Ontario, Canada
Library Uses:
This book would be a good book club book. There are a lot of underlying themes that could be discussed by the group; this book is very thought-provoking so there would probably be some excellent discussion. It is also a book that is enjoyable to read, and may encourage people to be willing to read more book suggestions in the future.
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