How I Live Now ~ Meg Rosoff

Meg Rosoff’s first novel, How I Live Now, which won the 2005 Printz award, is told by Daisy, a fifteen your old American girl, shipped off to England to live with cousins. Her dad has remarried, and Daisy just does not fit in the picture, with a new baby on the way. She doesn’t like her dad much at this point, so, even though she did not choose to go to England, she’s just as happy not to stay home. But, an important point about Daisy is that she is not happy. And, as I suppose is the case with many books for adolescents and about adolescents: the book tells the story of the character, in one way or another, and his or her journey towards happiness.

Daisy moves in with her aunt’s family, in the countryside (her dead mother’s sister) She turns out to really love these people, almost right off. The hitch is that soon after her arrival, war breaks out, and all hell breaks loose. The story follows Daisy and her cousins and their efforts to deal, in this somewhat post-apocalyptic situation. It’s dark and grim and tense – the book, I mean. Yet, in some ways, their situation is pretty normal, they live and eat (the eating part is kind of important… read the book, you’ll see) and are actually pretty okay, against a fuzzy dark-ish scary background.

As someone who studiously avoids books with scary stuff and violence, I think it says something about this book and the way the story happens that I really loved it. The story of Daisy and her cousins is sharp and clear and vivid, and not so war-like and violent, and the war stuff feels – for the most part – more in the background, and less sharp and clear, and I think that is why I could deal with it. It was actually an interesting device, on the part of the author, the way she left a lot sort of fuzzy, about the war. That’s not to say there are not a few yucky moments, but, by the time they came around, I felt okay about reading them, for some reason.

I would not say that Daisy is a totally loveable character, there is something about her that means you don’t just fall in love with her (she’s no Maniac Magee, a character we all want to either be, be best friends with, or be the parent of…). But, she’s interesting and compelling and soon after the story begins, you do find yourself really wanting to know what is going to happen to her, how it will all turn out for her.