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Meg Rosoff

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How I Live Now Paperback – April 11, 2006

by Meg Rosoff (Author)

4.2 1,382 ratings

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“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.

Reading age

12 - 17 years
Print length

194 pages
Language

English
Grade level

7 - 9
Lexile measure

1620L
Dimensions

5.25 x 0.49 x 8.06 inches
Publisher

Wendy Lamb Books
Publication date

April 11, 2006
ISBN-10

9780553376050
ISBN-13

978-0553376050
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A daring, wise, and sensitive look at the complexities of being young in a world teetering on chaos, Rosoff's poignant exploration of perseverance in the face of the unknown is a timely lesson for us all." - People Magazine

"This riveting first novel paints a frighteningly realistic picture of a world war breaking out in the 21st century . . . Readers will emerge from the rubble much shaken, a little wiser, and with perhaps a greater sense of humanity." - Publishers Weekly, Starred

“That rare, rare thing, a first novel with a sustained, magical and utterly faultless voice. After five pages, I knew she could persuade me to believe anything.” —Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“Readers will remain absorbed to the very end by this unforgettable and original story.”—The Bulletin, Starred

“A winning combination of acerbic commentary, innocence, and sober vision. . . . Hilarious, lyrical, and compassionate.”—The Horn Book, Starred

“A fantastic treat . . . Daisy is an unforgettable heroine.”—Kliatt, Starred

“Powerful and engaging . . . a likely future classic.”—The Observer (U.K.)

“A crunchily perfect knock-out of a debut novel.”—The Guardian (U.K.)

From the Back Cover

""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.

About the Author

This is Meg Rosoff’s first novel. The author lives in London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

My name is Elizabeth but no one’s ever called me that. My father took one look at me when I was born and must have thought I had the face of someone dignified and sad like an old-fashioned queen or a dead person, but what I turned out like is plain, not much there to notice. Even my life so far has been plain. More Daisy than Elizabeth from the word go.

But the summer I went to England to stay with my cousins everything changed. Part of that was because of the war, which supposedly changed lots of things, but I can’t remember much about life before the war anyway so it doesn’t count in my book, which this is.

Mostly everything changed because of Edmond.

And so here’s what happened.

2

I’m coming off this plane, and I’ll tell you why that is later, and landing at London airport and I’m looking around for a middle-aged kind of woman who I’ve seen in pictures who’s my Aunt Penn. The photographs are out of date, but she looked like the type who would wear a big necklace and flat shoes, and maybe some kind of narrow dress in black or gray. But I’m just guessing since the pictures only showed her face.

Anyway, I’m looking and looking and everyone’s leaving and there’s no signal on my phone and I’m thinking Oh great, I’m going to be abandoned at the airport so that’s two countries they don’t want me in, when I notice everyone’s gone except this kid who comes up to me and says You must be Daisy. And when I look relieved he does too and says I’m Edmond.

Hello Edmond, I said, nice to meet you, and I look at him hard to try to get a feel for what my new life with my cousins might be like.

Now let me tell you what he looks like before I forget because it’s not exactly what you’d expect from your average fourteen-year-old what with the CIGARETTE and hair that looked like he cut it himself with a hatchet in the dead of night, but aside from that he’s exactly like some kind of mutt, you know the ones you see at the dog shelter who are kind of hopeful and sweet and put their nose straight into your hand when they meet you with a certain kind of dignity and you know from that second that you’re going to take him home? Well that’s him.

Only he took me home.

I’ll take your bag, he said, and even though he’s about half a mile shorter than me and has arms about as thick as a dog leg, he grabs my bag, and I grab it back and say Where’s your mom, is she in the car?

And he smiles and takes a drag on his cigarette, which even though I know smoking kills and all that, I think is a little bit cool, but maybe all the kids in England smoke cigarettes? I don’t say anything in case it’s a well-known fact that the smoking age in England is something like twelve and by making a big thing about it I’ll end up looking like an idiot when I’ve barely been here five minutes. Anyway, he says Mum couldn’t come to the airport cause she’s working and it’s not worth anyone’s life to interrupt her while she’s working, and everyone else seemed to be somewhere else, so I drove here myself.

I looked at him funny then.

You drove here yourself? You DROVE HERE yourself? Yeah well and I’M the Duchess of Panama’s Private Secretary.

And then he gave a little shrug and a little dog-shelter-dog kind of tilt of his head and he pointed at a falling-apart black jeep and he opened the door by reaching in through the window which was open, and pulling the handle up and yanking. He threw my bag in the back, though more like pushed it in, because it was pretty heavy, and then said Get in Cousin Daisy, and there was nothing else I could think of to do so I got in.

I’m still trying to get my head around all this when instead of following the signs that say Exit he turns the car up onto this grass and then drives across to a sign that says Do Not Enter and of course he Enters and then he jogs left across a ditch and suddenly we’re out on the highway.

Can you believe they charge £13.50 just to park there for an hour? he says to me.

Well to be fair, there is no way I’m believing any of this, being driven along on the wrong side of the road by this skinny kid dragging on a cigarette and let’s face it who wouldn’t be thinking what a weird place England is.

And then he looked at me again in his funny doggy way, and he said You’ll get used to it. Which was strange too, because I hadn’t said anything out loud.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0553376055
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wendy Lamb Books; Reprint edition (April 11, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 194 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780553376050
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553376050
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 12 - 17 years
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1620L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 7 - 9
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.49 x 8.06 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #473,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #86 in Teen & Young Adult Literary Fiction
- #259 in Teen & Young Adult European Historical Fiction
- #1,465 in Teen & Young Adult Social Issues

Customer Reviews:
4.2 1,382 ratings

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Meg Rosoff

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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.

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Rachel Speakes

An Important Book

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2017

Verified Purchase

How I Live Now is by far one of the strangest books I have ever read. It is also one of the best. With that being said, I could see why a vast majority of people would not like it.

I found out about this book through the movie. I heard that Saoirse Ronan was going to be starring in it and I was immediately interested. This book deals with some hard topics that not many people like to talk about but that need to be discussed. Meg Rosoff manages to balance these complicated ideas without making them the center of attention. The plot of this book is surviving a World War and the characters trying to find their way back to each other. It just happens to include, anorexia, extreme PTSD, and incest between cousins.

The writing style in this book is extremely different and a little hard to get into. There are no quotations marks, many run on sentences, and very little punctuation. Without spoiling it, the reasoning for this style of writing is explained near the end of the book and it makes the story that much better and even more heartbreaking. Even though the writing was strange, that didn't stop Meg from being able to write some beautiful passages and quotes through out the book.

Most books about wars are action packed and fast paced because they usually take place in the worst part of the war. How I Live Now took place at the very beginning of it. It was a very slow build, which I loved, and the main characters were left unaffected for quite a while. It reminded me of if you were to read a book about the very start of a zombie apocalypse. It would take a very long time for the virus to start affecting everyone in the world.

The characters in this book were all very distinct, different, and realistic. It was interesting to see how the four siblings, ranging from ages nine to sixteen, shared many of the same ideas and also disagreed on many. They each dealt with the war in four very different ways. Then, there was Daisy. She started as a negative, spoiled kid from New York and she had to learn how to fit in with a bunch of positive, nature loving siblings who lived in the country side of England.

I have yet to watch the movie, but I would love to do so soon. I know that it is very different from the book when it comes to characters and character deaths, but I've heard many positive things about it.

This book was absolutely incredible and probably one of my favorites of the year. It is definitely a book that I have thought about constantly since I finished it and I wish that more people, teens especially, would read it. I feel like it would be a good book to have on a required reading list for school.

Violence: 4/5

Sex: 2/5

Language: 2/5

9 people found this helpful

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BJ

This is a thinking book!

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2014

Verified Purchase

I read the reviews before I read the book and they were a mixed bag. The book as a whole is coming from the point of view of a 15 year old girl who arrives in England from New York City. She is a mess, because her Dad remarried and her step-mother wanted her out of the way since she is carrying a child of her own. The family situation has left her severely anorexic and starved for love. The novel starts out with her 14 year old cousin picking her up at the airport. Her Aunt Penn is involved in the peace process and is in Oslo when the war begins.

This is a lyrical book written in the voice of a confused and neglected child who is still quite young for her age. In a strange way it reminds me of Animal Farm. The war is a nebulous character in this story. Children who are used to being in constant communication lose cell towers, the internet, then electricity and food. Her 4 cousins and Daisy have to depend upon each other for survival and let everything around them happen without thinking much about who makes the mysterious drops of food and what is going on around the world.

Aunt Pen is an absent character, but in the few minutes she spends with Daisy she gives her more validation and the same love she gives her own children. Because her Mom died giving birth to her and her Dad refuses to talk about her Mom, this validation helps when the kids are separated and she and her young cousin Piper are sent off without the boys. She who never wanted a sibling becomes the mother and sister figure for a cousin she has come to love fiercely in a short time.

I would never have sent my child off with a war coming and I would have moved heaven and earth to get her back home the moment I knew what was happening, but Daisy's father writes he loves her as almost a Postscript to the story of what is going on with her stepmother. Daisy's disconnect makes her free from adult supervision and has her making poor decisions like starting an affair with her cousin Edmond. He has a psychic ability that seems to run in his family that lets him know what she needs before she needs it and answer her questions without her having to ask them. He provides her comfort and a way to control her life without controlling her food intake as a rebellion. The sex is mentioned in an offhand way and is more of a reaction to not knowing what is going on, who is in charge, what will become of them and will they die from the diseases and lack of food and medicine. When Daisy arrives it is the strange and magical cousins who take care of her and by the time they have been separated it is Daisy who wants to love and protect them from the changes coming. Her life has been lived with pain and uncertainty and she does not want this to happen to her cousins. In caring for them, she finds her own unknown fate easier to handle.

The descriptions of the cost of war were interesting. Since all the hospitals were caring for the bombed, poisoned or quarantined cases, the major they live with has set up field hospitals for civilians. There are no cancer drugs and antibiotics are carefully rationed. Women and children are dying of what would have been a simple delivery and injection for Rh factors is now a death sentence. The simple accidents like breaking a leg or needing antibiotics for a cut along with a tetanus shot is suddenly a life or death situation. Cows need to be milked by hand and there is no electricity for life support machinery or to hatch chickens to continue the food supply. People and animals were dying and needed to be buried. What food was available needed to be distributed under the occupation but no one ever explains who is occupying England. The troops were on the other side of the world when the attack began, so now it is the occupiers who are defended England against the return of their own armed forces or as the major explains...think of it as we are 60 million hostages. Daisy marvels at how simple it was to take England by poisoning the water supply and cutting off transportation and communications if you did not plan on living through it. Their National guard is all that stands between the mysterious attackers and anarchy. The bad guys had snatched gasoline and infrastructure and the Guard could only collect and distribute what remained.

In the meantime, she is able at night when it is quiet to feel Edmond in her mind. She can feel him, knows he has a respiratory illness, knows he is cold and even sees an image of where they are. She told him about Piper and what she had found out and sometimes she could feel him lying next to her giving her strength and comfort. She keeps quiet about it and puts it down to the same kind of thing that makes people know something is wrong with a loved one or twins to communicate when miles apart. She is no longer a self absorbed kid and decides to fight to keep her sanity. Daisy knows she has to come up with a way they can be helpful and get away to find the rest of the family. She finally decides to present themselves as the trainers of sheep dogs and Jet the dog they brought with them becomes their ticket out. They go daily to a large dairy farm and the dog helps move the cows out to graze since their is no hay. Piper and Jet evoke feelings of home and hearth and become great favorites with the military men and Daisy finds out where Edmund and Gin the other sheepdog are located. Daisy becomes involved in picking fruits and vegetables and getting milk out by having people bring their own bottles. Daisy did not stand out as much because everyone was skinny and she built up her body to do the hard physical work. One day Joe, an annoying boy not much older than her, starts mouthing off to a check point guard and gets his head shot off. The Major tries to help him and is shot as well. Daisy and Piper are finally forced to realize all their lives are in danger and the atrocities of war become all to real. The worst horror is how fast you get used to losing people you care about.

They start an epic journey to find the rest of the family with little food and fear, rain and nightmare visions of what they will find. They arrive to animals and birds of prey and dead bodies and the smell of death around them. They do not find Piper's brothers so they head back to the house and the hidden lambing barn. They put up what food is left in the gardens and go through the woods and find wild things to add to them. One day they went back to the house and the phone rang.

This is a story of survival in a time of madness, of being happy for a short time and trying to survive the rest of your life without forgetting and most of all the not knowing about the people you love. How I Live Now is a book you will think about and reflect upon like Lord of the Flies. Kids can become amazing heroes or forever damaged in wars. Mostly, they just try to survive.

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Cliente Amazon

A good read

Reviewed in Italy on May 12, 2019

Verified Purchase

This (apocalyptical?) story is told by a teenage girl which makes it easy to read and funny. There’s a beginning of a world conflict and she finds herself stuck with her cousins in the English countryside. After this experience this New York girl will never remain the same.

UNOR1G1NAL

Seems like a winner

Reviewed in Canada on January 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

Was a Christmas present for my 13 year old niece. She specially requested it and was excited to receive it.

Laura B.

Muy buena opinión

Reviewed in Spain on October 15, 2018

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Este era el libro de lectura obligada para el verano en inglés de 2º de ESO. Le gustó mucho!

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Josh

cousins????

Reviewed in Australia on December 8, 2023

Verified Purchase

would be a perfect story if not for the familial relations that disturb me but also i guess daisy had some problems

Creepy Pasta Kitty

I should say this is my favourite film and book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 15, 2017

Verified Purchase

Before I start, I should say this is my favourite film and book, so this will be a long review :p , but hopefully you'll find it helpful, but mostly I'll be comparing it to the film, talking about the differences etc. Ok I should start by saying I've seen the film as well as listening to this audio book(I saw the film first), and also the film has audio description, so both are accessible to visually impared people like me. There are many differences between the audio book and film, some good, some bad, but to be honest on the whole I think the film is quite a bit better, however considering the film is my favourite film ever, the book is still amazing.

One of the main differences is with the characters and character development. The character who differs most is the main character Daisy. In the film she is abrasive, bitchy, cold etc at first, and to some extent after first meeting her. This is toned down massivley in the book, and the film makes Daisy seem less "normal" , she seems to have more issues in the film. And I find film Daisy more relatable due to this xd and therefore prefer film Daisy. However one problem I had with the film is Daisy and Edmund's relationship seemed rushed. And on this front the book does improve on this, as the book is longer than the film and the time from them first meeting to them being seperated feels longer in the book. This combined with the fact book Daisy feels more "normal" and the book does a better job of convincingly portraying Daisy as more slutty, along with Edmund through her thoughts on him, and in the book it feels more realistic for Daisy and Edmund to start having sex and start a relationship so soon after meeting. Also the other male in the household who's name I forget(especially as I think it's different in the book, and in both only has a small role) is just a family friend in the film if I'm not mistaken, but is a cousin in the book, and it makes more sense in my opinion for him to be a cousin. Finally Isaac is totally different, probably the biggest change apart from Daisy, and I prefer film Isaac, book Isaac is quiet, in touch with animals etc...remind you of anyone? Yep he is too much like Edmund, the film does a good job at making him his own character. But on that front too the film also achieves this with Edmund. In the book he isn't portrayed as in touch with animals as he is in the film, Isaac is more really, I think the film stole some of Isaac's qualaties for Edmund tbh. And yeah Isaac and Edmund just seem too similar in the book, and generally the film portrays Edmund as more interesting and distinctive. Plus it helps that the cast in the film are just amazing, Ronan being one of my favourite actresses. You'll notice I didn't mention piper, and that is because Piper is largely the same. Just as adorable :p .

Then there is the issue of the war. The book is longer and in my opinion portrays the build up to the war, and the war in general better, though how it is portrayed in the film is pretty good. However one gripe I have is that the book does very well at portraying how dangerous the war is to the average citizen, the UK as a whole, and even the world, but not as good at portraying the danger to the main characters. But this might be because I saw the film previously, which does the reverse, focussing more on the characters in terms of immediate danger, and less on the world at large. So there's pros and cons with both depictions, the book does a better job at world building, the film does better at showing the constant threat the main characters face.

As for the ending, well I can't say too much in case anyone hasn't seen the film, and especially if anyone hasn't read/listened to the book. But the comparisons are what you'd expect from what I'd say already,, but I again prefer the film's ending. So in summary the film is better in many ways, but the book is better in some ways. So I'd suggest listening to the book first, then watching the film, especially as the book does do a better job at world building. Looking at the book by itself, without comparing it to the film it really is very good, and although I prefer a fair few things in the film, and have a couple of minor issues with the book, it's an amazing book, with an amazing plot and characters, and definatly a good listen.

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