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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Overwhelmingly true and touching,
This review is from: When We Were Romans: A Novel (Hardcover)
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.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fancy wrapping, nothing much inside,
By Nicole (Chicago) - See all my reviews
This review is from: When We Were Romans: A Novel (Hardcover)
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.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartwarming, touching, and true to life,
By
This review is from: When We Were Romans: A Novel (Hardcover)
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.
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