Review
After Meg Rosoff's much-loved
How I Live Now defied its YA category
and made its way onto adult shelves to much
critical acclaim,
What I Was is her
first novel to be packaged as an adult book.
The story is simple but compelling: a
16-year-old boarding school boy happens upon
the mysterious young Finn who lives alone in
a shack by the sea. The protagonist becomes
utterly obsessed with Finn, wants to
be
him so badly that it reads like love – that
rare and singular kind of platonic
first-love that exhibits more as self-love,
as the desire to
be the object rather
than possess it. Coming-of-age is Rosoff's
territory, but too much of this one doesn't
ring true. The extreme tenderness and...
Beyond the Book
Useful to Know
If you read
interviews and blogs
about Meg Rosoff you
may find references
to a book called
The Dark Ages.
This was the title
that she first gave
to her story about H
and Finn, but which
she later renamed
What I Was.
What I Was
was published as
a young adult title
in the UK in summer
2007, but was
positioned as a book
for adults in the USA -
an interesting
situation for an...
