BookBrowse Reviews What I Was by Meg Rosoff

BookBrowse:

Rosoff captures the rush and the cruelty of adolescent desire and the imprint it leaves on a person

After Meg Rosoff's much-loved How I Live Now defied its YA category and made its way onto adult shelves to much critical acclaim, What I Was is her first novel to be packaged as an adult book. The story is simple but compelling: a 16-year-old boarding school boy happens upon the mysterious young Finn who lives alone in a shack by the sea. The protagonist becomes utterly obsessed with Finn, wants to be him so badly that it reads like love – that rare and singular kind of platonic first-love that exhibits more as self-love, as the desire to be the object rather than possess it. Coming-of-age is Rosoff's territory, but too much of this one doesn't ring true. The extreme tenderness and depth of H's observations and sentiments don't jive with his clueless, careless and typical - if somewhat more sensitive - 16-year-old-boyishness. Historical details that are surely meant to add dimension read as mostly irrelevant and out-of-place in this brief piece, and the dramatic climax and twist crashes in and sweeps up too quickly to be anything more than shocking and unsatisfying.

The treat of the book is Rosoff’s beautiful and mythically charged setting. Her lush prose paints the craggy rocks and crashing sea surrounding Finn’s fairy-tale-like shack and the bone-aching chill of the damp winds with unforgettable detail. However, her stellar prose makes the book all the more disappointing, as it sets the reader up to expect greatness through-and-through. While the three star rating indicates "average", Rosoff's talents are anything but, so if you're a newcomer, start with How I Live Now to experience the full breadth of her fiction.

About the Author

Meg Rosoff was born in Boston, in 1956, the second of four sisters, grew up in the Boston suburbs, went to "ordinary suburban schools" and then to Harvard. After three years of thinking ‘I’ve got to get out of here’, she packed a bag and got on a plane for London where she applied and was accepted to art college to study sculpture. She says that art school was a disaster, "I was obviously a writer not a sculptor, but I didn’t know that then .... but the rest of the year was a revelation. There was an unbelievable amount of fun to be had in London in 1977-78. I’m still reeling."

Eventually she returned to the US and finished her degree, then moved to New York City where she spent ten years working in publishing and advertising before quitting her job to return to London, where she still is. She lives in Highbury, north London, is married to an an English painter and has a daughter, Gloria. She says that she was inspired to write a book after her youngest sister died of breast cancer at the age of 39 leaving behind two little boys, and she thought if "I was going to write a book, I’d better do it soon because life is short." Her middle sister has also had breast cancer and then it was Meg's turn - at the moment How I Live Now came out she was diagnosed with cancer. She recollects the flowers at the hospital on the day of publication and the cards with their congratulations and commiseration messages. She says, "It was freaky. I felt: this puts everything into perspective."

She followed How I Live Now with Just In Case and is working on a fourth novel, The Bride's Farewell, which will be published in the UK in September '09 and the US in August '09.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in January 2008, and has been updated for the January 2009 edition. Click here to go to this issue.