Bianca
Written on Jul 15, 2016
I was dying, of course, but then we all are. Every day, in perfect increments, I was dying of loss.
How I Live Now is an original and poignant book by Meg Rosoff
How I Live Now is the powerful and engaging story of Daisy, the precocious New Yorker and her English cousin Edmond, torn apart as war breaks out in London, from the multi award-winning Meg Rosoff. How I Live Now has been adapted for the big screen by Kevin Macdonald, starring Saoirse Ronan as Daisy and releases in 2013.
Fifteen-year-old Daisy thinks she knows all about love. Her mother died giving birth to her, and now her dad has sent her away for the summer, to live in the English countryside with cousins she's never even met.
There she'll discover what real love is: something violent, mysterious and wonderful. There her world will be turned upside down and a perfect summer will explode into a million bewildering pieces.
How will Daisy live then?
'Fresh, honest, rude, funny. I put it down with tears on my face' - Julie Myerson, Guardian
'Assured, powerful, engaging . . . you will want to read everything that Rosoff is capable of writing' - Observer
'An unforgettable adventure' - Sunday Times
Bestselling author Meg Rosoff has received great critical acclaim since the publication of her first novel How I Live Now (winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize). Her other novels, Just in Case (winner of the 2007 Carnegie Medal), The Bride's Farewell and What I Was which was described by The Times as 'Samuel Beckett on ecstasy', are also available from Puffin. Follow Meg on Twitter @megrosoff.
Also by Meg Rosoff:
How I Live Now; Just In Case; What I Was; The Bride's Farewell; There is No Dog
- ISBN10 0141318015
- ISBN13 9780141318011
- Publish Date 30 June 2005 (first published 1 January 2004)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 9 February 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 224
- Language English
Reviews
boghunden
Written on Aug 28, 2014
I was very bored throughout the entire book. I didn't care about the characters, the plot or the writing.
To start with the worst first:
The writing annoyed me so much! It's entirely written from Daisy's POV and there's no dialogue in the book at all. The punctuations are also somewhat not there. It's annoying, really. It didn't do anything for me.
The characters didn't mean anything to me - I didn't care for them one bit. Except the last 20 pages - I really liked Edmond in those pages, but that's not nearly enough to make this a good reading experience for me.
I kind of wanted a lot of characterdevelopment to take place, because who doesn't change when there's a war going on? And every young person goes through a change at some point. I just didn't see it in this story. Perhaps the book was just too short for this kind of story?
As far as the plot goes, I was somewhat annoyed that Daisy's father - who send her off to live with her aunt - called to check on her when the war started, but the aunt who's supposed to now be the responsible one, she takes off to Norway and doesn't call home to check on Daisy or her own kids. Wtf?! I thought that okay, maybe she's dead, but it turns out she wasn't - not for the first couple of months at least.
Everything felt forced, it happened way too fast. I didn't even get to know the characters until the book was over. Way too short, but then again, good for me, because I didn't really care about this book.
I'm sure there are lots of people out there who'll enjoy this book, sadly I'm just not one of them.
nightingalereads
Written on Nov 15, 2013
Nessa Luna
Written on Sep 14, 2013
Honestly, after seeing the trailer (of the movie based on this book) I thought the book might be good. I had tried reading it before, but I thought my ebook version was a bit weird, because the dialogue was all wibbly-wobbly. But it turned out that the dialogue was actually written like that. No quotation marks, no commas to indicate where the dialogue started and stopped (well sometimes there was), nothing.
The way the story was written, with Daisy telling that she was going to write down how the war changed her life, reminded me a bit of Tomorrow When the War Began (and also with the whole unknown enemy thing); but that was probably just a coincidence. I liked the story, apart from the whole incest thing. Really, why do people think that it’s a good idea to write about incest? Why? If you want your main character to fall in love with someone, you can just make up that they’re a friend of your cousin, not your cousin! They’re fictional, anything is possible! You can make up anything! Okay, of course, they can make up that their main character fell in love with their cousin but why?!
A lot of things were quite unclear to me, for example there was this conversation between Daisy and Major McEvoy, and then she said something like ‘eleven letters starting with E’, and I spend the rest of the book trying to think of an eleven lettered word that started with an E. It was probably mentioned before in the book, but who remembers every word mentioned in a book? That’s right, no one.
There was also a part where someone (I’m not gonna mention names, because spoilers) was shot, and this other guy started getting out of the car, and apparently, he was shot too. I had to read that part THREE times before I understood what happened. At first, I just thought they drove off without the second guy, but it turned out he had died as well.
I told myself I’d read fifty pages, and see if it had improved after that. It didn’t, but I read on because I’m like that (I don’t like leaving books unfinished). At the end, Daisy got a phone call from someone, and then apparently ‘part zero’ ended, because after that we got ‘part one’ (it might have been that my e-book was wibbly-wobbly and part one was actually supposed to be called part two, but I have no idea). Part one was written a lot better than the rest of the book, with proper quotation marks, because apparently Daisy was a grown-up now and grown-ups write properly. Honestly, if the book had been written better, and if they hadn’t included the whole incest thing, I might have liked the book more. Books about wars (fictional or non-fictional ones) have always interested me, but this one was actually a bit ‘boring’ (not very action packed until I was at page eighty or so). I’m just really a fan of action-packet stories.
Still, I’m glad I read the book, because then I’ll probably understand the movie a bit better (If they ever decide to play it in the Netherlands, because IMDb hasn’t got a Dutch date, hmpff).
elvinagb
Written on Apr 23, 2013
This book was written in 2004 but the themes and backdrop reflect how we live now. Daisy is a funny and quirky teen who has to navigate this new life and like her cousins adapt to the terrifying situation they find themselves living in.
This is brilliant novel and an absolute must read.
ibeforem
Written on Jun 26, 2008
Daisy is the narrator here, and the writing style is true to the uncertain voice of a teenager — the slightly rambling, run-on sentences and narrow worldview are spot on. I liked Daisy, even though she starts out pretty selfish and more than slightly screwed-up. By the end of the story she is a completely different person, but the world is also a completely different place.
I think this story had the potential to be too much — too horrific, too gory, too heroic, too sad, too uncomfortable, too unbelievable. Instead, it was just right.