What I Was [Hardcover]

Meg Rosoff (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Viking (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141383437
• ISBN-13: 978-0141383439
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,735,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Meg Rosoff was born in Boston, educated at Harvard and St Martin's College of Art, and worked in New York City for ten years before moving to London permanently in 1989. She worked in publishing, politics, PR and advertising until 2004, when she wrote her first novel, How I Live Now, which won the Guardian Children's fiction prize (UK), Michael L Printz prize (US), the Die Zeit children's book of the year (Germany) and was shortlisted for the Orange first novel award. Her second novel, Just in Case, won the 2007 Carnegie Medal. Meg's latest book is The Bride's Farewell. She lives in London with her husband, daughter and two very hairy dogs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Oozing with nostalgia..., February 3, 2008

By 

Eric Bradley "music junkie" (houston, tx, usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What I Was: A Novel (Hardcover)

I just read some reviews and will warn you that too many of them will spoil your experience if you read them before the book.

I'm a sucker for nostalgia and this book has it in spades. It's a beautifully written story set in 1960's England. I guess you could consider it a coming-of-age story, but that's a bit too simple.

It just exceeds 200 pages so it's great if you want something to just fill a weekend. The author has been considered a "Young Adults" author until this newest work, and critics are finally saying that her writing is worth a more consideration than that.

Anyway, I would highly recommend the book. Now, I can't wait to go back and read her previous novels.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, February 12, 2008

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What I Was: A Novel (Hardcover)

Publishers and the general reading public are finally getting wise to a truth that those of us who review young adult fiction have known for a long time: some of the best, most profound novels in recent years have been published in the "young adult" category.

Meg Rosoff is one of those novelists who has managed to transcend categorization as a writer solely for young people, and now her newest book, WHAT I WAS, is being published and marketed for an adult audience. Although it does not differ markedly in style or maturity from her earlier work, such as her award-winning post-apocalyptic novel HOW I LIVE NOW, WHAT I WAS should reach a deservedly larger audience thanks to Rosoff's publisher's decision to broaden her readership.

WHAT I WAS begins in the not-too-distant future, as our narrator (who remains nameless for most of the book), now an aged man on the brink of 100, rows along the coast of England with his young godson. Desperately trying to find and identify the landmarks of his youth, the narrator casts his mind back to the time he spent in this area when he was a student at St. Oswald's boarding school in the years after World War II.

As a boy, the narrator was a disastrous student. Asked to leave a series of boarding schools due to "the deplorable nature of my behavior and grades," the narrator's main failing is his inability to successfully navigate the social structures and power struggles that characterize boys' schools such as St. Oswald's. Thanks to the brutal bullying of his roommates and the benign neglect of the schools' authority figures, the narrator, thoroughly miserable, uses every opportunity to escape from the confines of St. Oswald's. It is on one such escape that he makes a discovery that will change his life forever.

The narrator discovers a remote cottage, set apart from the mainland, as it is only reachable during low tide. The cottage is set apart figuratively, too, as it seems to belong to an era of history long before the conflicts and political struggles of the 20th century. The narrator also meets --- and becomes instantly enamored of --- the cabin's sole occupant, a boy of about his own age named Finn. Readers will find themselves asking whether the narrator is obsessed with Finn because he loves him or because he wants to be him and all he represents, set as he is, far apart from the daily torments of St. Oswald's and society in general.

There is a lot to digest in Rosoff's latest novel. Questions of sexuality, friendship, identity and love are raised, as is the question of fate. Most intriguing is its exploration of history. The author intentionally posits Finn as leading a pre-modern existence, a simple way of life analogous to the alluring Dark Ages the narrator studies in school. Contrasting this with the power-hungry, social-climbing, rule-abiding 20th century in which the narrator reluctantly finds himself, Rosoff constructs a sort of allegory of history embodied by two very different young people.

WHAT I WAS is not perfect --- an implicit warning about global warming seems out of place, as does the narrator's callous indifference to the fate of one obnoxious classmate --- but it is provocative. Using a dreamy, elegiac tone that captures an old man's recollection of his youth, Rosoff nevertheless evokes youth's indiscretions and obsessions every bit as capably as she has done in her more typical "young adult" titles. Mature teens will still find much to ponder here. More importantly, adults who see this novel in the general fiction shelves may be inspired to pick up Rosoff's other work and discover what those of us who enjoy young adult literature have known all along.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

26 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Think about history and tell me that I'm wrong", January 25, 2008

By 

Michael Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What I Was: A Novel (Hardcover)

In 1962 Hilary, the young narrator of this novel is packed off to St Oswald's boarding school for boys by his parents deep within the inhospitable plains of East Anglia. A school that has a reputation as a veritable hotbed of cultural mediocrity and is notorious for its long history and low standards, there's hope that St. Oswald' will somehow attempt to transform Hilary into a useful member of society.

Still haunted by his "last two educational disasters," Hilary does his best to create an environment where he can feel at ease. Jaded by the petty dealings of his fellow classmates, life at St Oswald's is anything but happy with the young boy considering the school nothing more than a cheap merchant of social status, "content to sell an inflated sense of self-worth to middle-class boys who are ultimately of no particular merit."

Hilary hungers for new experiences far from the bleak halls, the glares of authority and the taunts of his roommates. One afternoon, after stopping for a drink of water while running along the coast, Hilary meets the young Finn, a teenage boy who seems content to live a life like Robinson Crusoe. Self-sufficient and contented, Finn makes his living by hauling boxes at the market and he not only has no parents, but lives alone and doesn't go to school. According to the government, Finn doesn't actually exist.

Living in a small, cozy hut by the edge of the beach, with its floors free of sand, its worn cotton rugs and its crammed bookcases, the place is unassuming, comfortable and intimate, proving to be the perfect safe harbor for Hilary. While Finn's spirit is new and soft, the cottage is warmed by decades of use and almost at once, this eccentric reclusive young boy entrances this reject from St. Oswald's: "It's as though I'd fallen down a rabbit hole into some idealized version of This Boy's Life."

Soon enough, Hilary is becoming ever more obsessed with Finn as he attempts to escape both day and night from the daily rituals of St Oswald's, endeavoring to spend time with his new friend, similarly envious of him and also concerned as Hilary stalks him at the local market, everything he knows about Finn eventually coming to him in fragments, tiny shards to number and label and fit together.

Despite the cold, they walk and fish, lie on the beach and stare at sunlit clouds or stars in the night sky, pulling in the traps, and messing about in boats. Life just seems so idyllic and safe from the strictures of school and adult life. All the time, Hilary seems content to just study Finn the way another boy might study history, determined to memorize his vocabulary, his movements, his clothes, and what he says and does, and mostly what he thought. Most of all he wants to see himself through his eyes to define himself in relation to Finn.

This isn't so much sexual attraction, although there is a great love, but its more a type of vicarious living, the sensation of living inside another person's life. Eventually ignoring the ever-harsher glares of authority and the taunts of his roommates, Hilary becomes more of a risk taker, braving the school's curfew to spend even more time with Finn. The accusations however, begin in whispers with Reese and Barrat and Gibbon.

Particularly, Reese with his psychotic tendencies taking him to places he's rather not go and who "lurks and lingers and buzzes around in Hilary's head," with his sticky friendship and sly questions and the barest suggestions that he knows what is going on. Of course, events eventually come to a disastrous and dreaded climax on the sandy shores of East Anglia as a huge storm tears sown the coast and Finn's hut becomes in danger of being swept into the sea. It is here against the roar of wonder of the ocean that memory, imagination, and reality clash with tragic consequences.

This lovely novel is all about friendship and history and how life can change, for better or for worse, though an event, an idea or the influence of another person. Succumbing to emotions so wonderful and terrible, Finn accepts Hilary's love instinctly, without responsibility or conditions; that's what makes him so special. The final revelation, the surprise twist is indeed unexpected, but it doesn't really change Hilary's reaction to the events of that year even as Hilary freaks out when he discovers Finn, sick with a fever and covered with blood in his own bed.

What I Was is a boy's story with a twist, but the book is also a meditation on history and how we can carry the past with us wherever we go. This story is one of many, or many parts of several different stories, along with the lives that come before us with the huts and houses, the remains of animals and clothing, "the messages of the past left in bones."

Finn and Hilary share a childlike delight in the beauty of the natural world and in the simplicities of daily life and they possess an unshakable integrity that ultimately makes possible their appreciation of nature and of each other. The story's emotional credibility is enhanced by the fact they are both different, yet seem to be drawn together forever even as we watch Hilary drive to recreate what has been destroyed and once shattered by storms and by the passage of life itself. Mike Leonard January 08.