Review: How I Live Now

My best friend introduced this book to me as “Hey Ann, here’s that book about incest. Enjoy!” – however that’s not strictly true. More, the book is about underage incest and World War Three. Well, she was close.

When I started reading the book (at half ten at night – I was done by half twelve), I must admit that I was wondering how old the writer was, how sane her publisher was and possibly what substance she was on whilst writing it. Something in the back of my mind told me that the run on sentences, complete lack of grammar and the general “I said this and she said this and he said this” set out of the book was done deliberately to “let the reader enter the mind of the 15-year-old narrator and see things from her perspective”, but boy, was it hard for me not to throw the book in the bin (before retrieving it, since it is in fact my friend’s book). However, I prevailed, and I must have got used to it after a while, since it became easier to read. The book isn’t difficult to read in that it requires a lot of thought and attention – like Lord of the Rings for example, but it has two huge flaws which makes it difficult to concentrate. One is the sentence-paragraph-horrible-style-I-want-to-kill-any-girl-who-writes-in-her-mental-diary-like-that (that’s pretty much how the book is narrated – like a mental diary), and the other is how fast the book moves. You get two paragraphs made up of eight sentences in the first chapter – and then the other chapters flick between one or two pages and about six. Now you understand why it’s even harder to concentrate on the story – I finished reading it with only a vague impression of what really happened, in fact I think that’s all she told me.

However, before you write this book off as a lost cause (although perhaps you would be right to), there’s something about this book which makes me think that perhaps the publisher was in her right mind. Of course, as usual with World War Three, you have the usual shocking disaster stuff, some “jump” moments where stuff happens that you weren’t really expecting (even more so when the book’s written like this), and general angst. As usual with teenage “in love” narrators, you get, well, even more teenage lovey angst when they’re separated. And then, just to be different, you get some Edward Cullen-style answering of your thoughts, because of course your soul mate can always read your mind.

But the only reason that I have as to why I think maybe the publisher was sane, is the ending. Once you finally understand what has happened, on the very last page, AT THE END OF THE BOOK we get a real insight into the narrator’s personality. So far through the book we have learned nothing about the main character aside from the fact that she’s 15, American, and anorexic (and the latter was barely touched upon), and we have learned very little about the personality of the other main character. Yet the thing that makes the book for me, are those last few pages which aren’t about sex with her cousin, and aren’t about how much she wants to see him again, the last few pages show her determination and her actual love, even years on. And that is the best part of the story.

So, this isn’t actually a book I would reccommend to anyone as a “good read”. It isn’t one I would reccommend to anyone full stop, except perhaps to budding authors with the words “you write a book like this and I’ll kill you”. However, maybe you should read it. Just for the last pages.

Tags: book, how i live now, meg rosoff, Review