Skip to main content

What I Was by Meg Rosoff

I've been holding on to this one because you have to be ready to sink into a Meg Rosoff book. None of this wishy-washy, "Oh, that might be nice to pick up tonight." You've got to be all in. Ready to let her work her magic. Interestingly, What I Was was first released in Britain as a YA title, then later in the U.S. by Viking Adult. Not sure why the switch but, as is the case with both her previous novels, I think What I Was will appeal equally to adults and young adults. I, naturally, couldn't put it down.

The narrator of this brief, haunting tale remains nameless for the majority of the book. All we know is the year is 1962, the place is England, and the main character is a young man who, having been expelled from two previous boarding schools, is being rather unceremoniously dropped off on the doorstep of his third. Unremarkable in almost every way, the only striking thing about him appears to be his supreme disdain for, well, most everything, a sort of monumental apathy he seems to have absorbed over sixteen years of uninspiring schools, uncaring teachers, and uninvolved parents.

The entire story is told by our narrator as he looks back on his life from the self-declared "impossible age" of 100. This device lends the boy of 16's narrative a certain degree of clarity and wisdom it would otherwise have lacked being told in the present tense. For instance the scene where his father drops him off:
"It's time you sorted yourself out," he said. "You're nearly a man." But a less true description could scarcely have been uttered. I was barely managing to get by as a boy.
Lines like these combine the hindsight of the adult with the aching uncertainty that is adolescence, the almost certain knowledge that one is going about the whole thing "wrong," without an inkling of what "right" should or would look like. So much of this novel is taken up by the notion of how we perceive things (particularly in our youth) and how those perceptions can be so real, they utterly subsume reality as it may be or as others may see it. And how those perceptions change us, marking our lives permanently. I don't want to go into any more detail than this, but suffice it to say our young man meets someone who changes his life, in both healthy and unhealthy ways, I would say. And, though neither of their lives end up as they thought they would, the change is what matters. As he puts it:
"It was love, of course, though I didn't know it then [...] At last I extinguished the lamp, though according to my watch it was still early. And then, divided from the night by nothing more than four flimsy walls and an idea of a friend, I fell asleep."
It's a quiet, beautiful, strange book and I loved it.

Links
Curled Up With a Good Book Review
Los Angeles Times Review
Monsters and Critics Review
The Bookbag Review
Times Online Review

Comments

  1. Anonymous5:57 PM

    I absolutely loved, loved, LOVED Meg Rosoff's "How I Live Now". It was amazing and one of those lifechanging novels that you never forget.

    However, I've had "What I Was" on my shelf for awhile, and started in on only the first chapter or so... I'm not sure why, but it's really hard for me to get into this one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know how you feel about How I Live Now. I read it in a day and then got up the next morning and read it again. What a book. And certainly her "warmest" novel to date.

    Each of her books seems to be wildly different in tone and, though How I Live Now is definitely my favorite, I really did love Just In Case, albeit in a wholly different way. I guess something about her writing just does it for me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm intrigued. I'm going to have to read this one at the end of the summer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah, I think you'd sink into it just fine, Kos. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

You Might Also Like

Angie's 2025 Must Be Mine

  As ever, begin as you mean to go on. And so here are my most anticipated titles of 2025: And we're still waiting for covers on these, but I'm just as excited for each of them: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 9 by Beth Brower Wish You Were Here by Jess K. Hardy Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher Pitcher Perfect by Tessa Bailey Father Material by Alexis Hall Alchemised by SenLinYu Breakout Year by K.D. Casey What titles are on your list?

The Year Fic Saved Me

Once upon a time, January came for us and proclaimed itself supremely uninterested in taking prisoners. Under the sustained assault, there were simply too many avenues of stress tearing into my brain. On one side of the field stood so many books (as they have always been there for me) ready to be read—to help. And on the other side loomed a distressing number of chasms inside me desperate to find solace and reprieve. But the two could not meet. No matter how many peace talks I attempted to broker.  In February, in a move so unprecedented that I can only describe it as a lifeline thrown down into the deepest of the chasms, my exhausted mind decided it would be a good idea to finally give fanfiction a whirl. Now, there's no getting around the fact that for someone who has read as many novels that involve fic in some way or another as I have—seriously, novels that began as fic, novels written by authors who got their start writing fic, novels about characters who write/illustrate/love...

Angie's Best Books of 2022

  Somehow the end of the year is here. And we're all here. And I still feel like placing this post in this space. So I shall. With gratitude and a certain wistful hope. For us all. But especially for these books, the people that walk them, their words, and their creators. (listed in the order in which I read them) Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian You Were Made to Be Mine by Julie Anne Long Impossible by Sarah Lotz Book Lovers by Emily Henry Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher The Bodyguard by Katherine Center The Worst Guy by Kate Canterbary Fire Season by K.D. Casey Husband Material by Alexis Hall Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson Heartbreaker by Sarah MacLean Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood Lore Olympus, Vol. 3 by Rachel Smythe Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 6 by Beth Brower Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots by Cat Sebastian Scattered Showers ...