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'Rarely does a writer come up with a first novel so assured, so powerful and engaging that you can be pretty sure that you will want to read everything this author is capable of writing'.
"EVERY WAR HAS turning points and every person too."
Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.
As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.
A riveting and astonishing story.
Michael Printz Award
2005
Daisy's voice is totally authentic and the story gripped and just wouldn't let go. More than any recent book, How I Live Now brought home how easily a country could be brought to its knees by a small invading force. As Daisy explains, 'when I heard how it happened I was pretty impressed by the cleverness of the guys who planned it, who as far as I understood basically waited for most of the British Army to be lured into crises on the other side of the world and then waltzed in and cut off all the transportation and communication sand stuff so basically they were defending Britain against its own returning armed forces rather than attacking.' Most poignant of all is a long postscript written by Daisy six years after the war, I have reread these particular chapters a number of times already and will likely return to them again.
If you liked How I Live Now, try these:
by Margaret Atwood
Published 2020
In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades.
by M.T. Anderson
Published 2019
National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson returns to future Earth in a sharply wrought satire of art and truth in the midst of colonization.
Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
That rare, rare thing, a first novel with a sustained, magical and utterly faultless voice. After five pages I knew that she could persuade me to believe almost anything.
