Customer Reviews

When We Were Romans: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When his mother decides to pack the family up to go to Rome, nine-year-old Lawrence isn't sure what to think. All he knows is that suddenly, his father is everywhere, out to get them, and they have to get away. He watches as his mother sinks into mental illness on their exodus, observing all with the sometimes innocent, sometimes surprisingly wise voice of a child. Intertwined with his story are his descriptions of his various interests, like the Solar System and some of the popes.

I loved this book. I've since learned that my feelings aren't universally felt, and I suspect I know why. Lawrence felt like me. How hard is it to grow up with mental illness in your family? Only those of us who have experienced it think about it, just as with any other familial problem. His struggles spoke to me, his thoughts echoed mine when I was around his age - honestly, it was eerie, but I was so moved. I also liked that it was written in his child's voice. As I was reading it, I was sucked in and totally believed in this character. Matthew Kneale never slips out of Lawrence's voice and it's easy to sink in and fall in love with him as his reactions echo that of every child.

I wasn't bothered by the spelling errors or the run-on grammar; I took it as an echo of Lawrence's thoughts, as if we were inside his head or he was telling us the story. It didn't bother me when he spelled names wrong or the new words he was learning were spelled phonetically. I was willing to accept it as the voice of a child, and I think that's where people have trouble with this book, because they're not willing to do the same. They get stuck on "Franseen" and Lawrence's run-on sentences and can't fall into the illusion. I think this writing style actually made the book stronger because I can just barely remember when my thoughts were like that, too, although I can't say I had Lawrence's spelling issues.

I think what moved me most is his relationship with his sister Jemima. I remember feeling very similarly towards my brother, and of course now everything like that is tinged with the edge of my grief. You pull together in such circumstances, even if you fight the rest of the time. And that's not to mention the end, which made me cry and just felt so true. I even liked Lawrence's historical and scientific tangents; it gave us a deeper edge into his personality and related his situation to the wider world, like he was expressing his feelings in a different way.

In essence, I unequivocally loved this book. I'm planning on emailing the author just to tell him how incredibly amazing I think it is. I think you should read it, too, but only if you're willing to suspend disbelief and accept Lawrence's story. Otherwise, the spelling and grammar will drive you crazy. In the end, this is an extremely accurate (take it from me, it really is) and moving picture from the head of a child whose mother has a mental illness and who tries to adapt in any way he can.

The salient feature of the novel is that it is told in the first-person voice of a nine-year-old boy, Lawrence, complete with grammatical and spelling errors. The gimmick was more annoying than anything else. I have no problem with telling the story through the filter of childhood, and using a stream-of-consciousness type voice along with the misunderstandings and mistakes common to children, but Lawrence's spelling seemed to contribute little to that filter and was, instead, highly distracting. Within a single paragraph a woman's name was spelled "Hilary," "Hillary," and "Hilery"--even a nine-year-old shouldn't be that indecisive, and it almost makes it seem as though Kneale can't remember exactly which misspelt variants Lawrence was supposed to be using (I doubt this was actually the case, but the conceit failed for this reader). (Sidebar: helpful hint to American readers--Kneale, and thus Lawrence, are non-rhotic speakers of English. This means whenever Lawrence spells something with "er" at the end, it means an "uh" sound, e.g., "Persher" is "Persia.")

Hannah, Lawrence's mother, decides to run away with her children to Rome, where she lived as a young woman and met their father, the man she is now trying to escape. The family moves from flat to flat as they wear out their welcome with Hannah's old friends until finally they find a place of their own. Through Lawrence's eyes we can see that things are not quite what they seem, though he is largely oblivious to the fact, and his mother is paranoid rather than pursued. For a time he begins to have doubts about his mother's fears, but she manages to convince him once again that her ex-husband is trying to kill the three of them. Lawrence then suggests what could be a permanent solution to their problem.

By the time the family makes the drive back from Rome to Edinburgh, Lawrence has been completely won over by his mother's cause, which makes the family's inevitable departure from fantasyland much more difficult. In fact, it is this ending to the story that caused the most problems for me. The entire novel is narrated by Lawrence in such a way that it must have been "written" by him after the events are over--there is no indication that it's a diary or that he's not looking back from after the fact. But nowhere does he show that he's grown at all, or learned anything, or even reflected for more than thirty seconds on any of the events or anything he's done. At the very end he undergoes a bit of a "transformation," only not, because he's pretty much unchanged.

I'm not sure if this is supposed to just be a reflection of the fact that he's still a small boy and not ready for the emotional toll of everything that's happened to him. But that makes him an unusually un-precocious child narrator. Maybe this is supposed to make the tale more poignant, but I just found myself wondering what the point of slogging through Lawrence's annoying thoughts and orthography was if even he wasn't going to learn from his own story.

I was very moved and touched by this book and love the way the story was constructed. We followed the story along with Lawrence, the main character. We found out what was happening as he did, and while there was some foreshadowing - enough to make us, as adults, realize a little more what was going on - we were still kept in suspense almost to the end.

It was very heartwarming, and I just wanted to take care of Lawrence and make all the trouble go away for him. I loved the characters and I loved the way the story was put together.

Very highly recommended.

When We Were Romans is a relatively short but very moving novel. Lawrence is a 9 year old boy, and the narrator of the tale. When the story begins, Lawrence is living with his mother and younger sister in a cabin following his parents' divorce. He is uprooted abruptly when his mother decides to move the family to Rome, where she once lived. The children each are allowed one box full of toys, Lawrence brings along his pet mouse Herman and they set off in the family car for Rome.

Once in Rome, they rely on the kindness of the mother's friends for lodging. Eventually they move into a rented apartment, and Lawrence's mother finds a job. However, she gets restless again and the reason for the initial move to Rome is revealed.

This book is very sad because of the young narrator's naiveté - it becomes clear to the reader that Lawrence's mother is struggling with mental illness, but of course Lawrence is too young to realize this. Instead he is drawn into his mother's paranoia, and bravely tries to please her and defend his family from his mother's many perceived enemies.

There are a couple of things in this book that did not work for me. Because of the first person narrative, there are misspellings throughout the text. This seemed like a gimmick to me, because simple words were often misspelled whereas complex ones were not, and the misspellings did not appear consistently throughout the book. Also, there are a number of lengthy stories about Roman emperors, etc. that I found distracting - the side discussions of astronomy did much more to add to the story. However, these gripes are very minor.

Overall this is a well-written and very unique book. Fans of The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime will find much to appreciate here.

I enjoyed this, in the way that I would enjoy talking to a precocious child. You have to keep in mind that the narrator is a nine-year old boy and sees the world from that vantage point. The book is written in as stream of consciousness (there were times I found myself gasping for breath just trying to keep up) and a lot of the spelling is phonetic (a little disconcerting, but easy to figure out if you pronounce the words). But, it works. The author succeeds in making the reader really get into Lawrence's life and the adjustments he has to make when his mother moves his little family to Rome.

I really want to like this book and some parts I do. But most of the time I just get really annoyed with the boy and find the story, which had such potential, to get stuck. It does have its moments but the author fails to make me belive and sympathize with the characters, they are not alive to me. I wouldn't recommend this book, you're better of choosing another one.

A fascinating look at a dysfunctional family. Alternately funny and heartbreaking as Lawrence attempts to help make things right again for his family, this story puts a unique spin on the effects of parental mental illness on children and manages to be an entertaining read in the process.

In When We Were Romans, precocious young Lawrence tells of the time he and his mother and little sister fled from the UK and his stalker-father, and lived for a time with friends in Rome.

Lawrence's stream-of-conscious(ish) narration is marked by a child's struggle with spelling, an interest in cosmology and Roman rulers, and a quirk of attributing animal labels to the people he meets. It's an original voice, not so much unreliable as naïve, and although it grows overdone and tedious, it's a terrific immersion into a child's perspective, specifically a child in the midst of family dysfunction.

NOTE: There's a suspense aspect to the novel, with a twist that's well-earned, and the best part of the book was having it dawn on me and then be confirmed through a gradual accumulation of clues. Thus I strongly recommend against reading reviews (and potential spoilers) before reading the book. Instead, jump in and enjoy!

ALERT: SPOILERS! I'd have to say I agree with another reviewer who said that readers should finish this novel before they read any reviews because not too much can be said about this novel without spoiling it for other readers. I'd give it 3.5 stars.

That being said, I'd have to say that the author does a pretty good job of writing a novel from the viewpoint of a young boy living within a dysfunctional family situation. The author has also tightly stacked the deck against poor Larry by putting him in a situation with a loving mother who is fine 80% of the time, a bratty younger sister who drives him "crazy", a distant father who had traveled a lot, a gift of "pleasure" reading about the immoral machinations of the Roman emperors, being suddenly yanked from his home to a foreign city, and so on.

Since most of the book's readers will not be 9 year old boys, one can only try to guess how they or their children would have reacted under those circumstances. However, I would venture to say that the deck is so tightly stacked here that no one had free will. The tragedy was set in stone, as most will have guessed, from the beginning. How it would play out was the all, but Larry's actions were to be of something along that line.

Since the "how it would play out" amounted to such a small portion of the book, I couldn't help wonder, was this all to remind us of what course to take the next time we decide to try a child criminal as an adult? Okay, but I'm still wondering if Larry and Jemima are playing mom games when they are teenagers. And what about that poor mom - does she ever get on some good anti-psychotics?

I just hate a good tragedy. Worth your time; forget the spelling issue - it's a minor annoyance.

Excellent for book clubs for length if nothing else. Seriously, we are all busy and need short, discussable books.

Nine-year old Lawrence lives with his mum and sister, Jemima, in England. They constantly have to worry that their estranged father will come from Scotland and hurt them. So one day his Mum packs them up and tells them they're going to stay in Rome until it's safe again. They drive and drive, and finally find their destination only to be passed from friend's house to friend's house. Lawrence's mum says their father is turning their friends against them, and Lawrence wants to do his best to help his mother, but sometimes he worries about her - she gets sad and stays in bed for days and some of her credit cards have stopped working. Lawrence has choices to make, but he really just wants to go home.

The innocence of Lawrence lends itself well to Kneale's narrative, allowing the reader to see only what the boy sees, even if we know that much more is going on that he can't understand. Every detail - the Italian culture, the family drama, Lawrence's retelling of stories from his history books - will suck you in.