Review of THIS IS HOW I LIVE NOW by Meg Rosoff

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rosoff, Meg. HOW I LIVE NOW. 2004. New York: Random House. ISBN 0385746776

2. PLOT SUMMARY

A teen-age American girl, Elizabeth, is sent by her father and step-mother, to live in England with her dead mother’s sister and her family. Elizabeth doesn’t get along with her step-mother, and has developed an eating disorder. She arrives in England and meets her new family. Her Aunt Penn lives on a farm in the country. Aunt Penn’s children are Edmond, Isaac, Osbert, and a girl, named Piper. She instantly bonds with the family, and enters into a romantic relationship with Edmond. A war breaks out and the family is separated from Aunt Penn. Then, Piper and Daisy are separated further from Edmond, Isaac, and Osbert. The two girls go to live with a couple, Mr. and Mrs. McEvoy. They go to different areas to do farm chores each day, but one day on the way back to the couple’s home, Mr. McEvoy is shot and killed. The girls, Mrs. McEvoy, and her young son, are taken to a farm, which is also a makeshift army base. The two girls decide to try and get back to their farm. They travel for weeks and finally make it to back home. The home is deserted, except for the corpses of fifteen men, women, and children. They stay on the farm until the war is over. Daisy, is forced by her father to come back to America. There, she enters the hospital. After she is released, she goes back to England to be with Edmond. He has post war trauma because he can’t bear all the terrible things he saw. He was also taken prisoner by the enemy, but later allowed to leave. He hasn’t spoken since the war. Aunt Penn died during the war and Piper, her boyfriend Jonathan, Edmond, and Isaac live at the farm that was their home before the war started. Osment moved out to live with his girlfriend. Daisy arrives and decides to stay on and hope that Edmond will someday recover.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

This book is a great read for grades 9-12. It contains sexual situations, as well as violence. The main character has an eating disorder, as well as emotional turmoil in her relationship with her step-mother. The characters are well developed and we feel their pain. The author’s vivid writing allows us to visualize what war feels like. The story is set in England during a war which has not yet happened. Her description of how a war in modern times would feel like, is very believable. The story is told in the present until Daisy is sent back to America, and then the story fast forwards to six years after the war.

I think most teen-agers can relate to Daisy and how she is forced to be a hero. She has to learn to survive on her own, as well as take care of her cousin Piper. Teen-agers will see that she is an ordinary teen-ager faced with extraordinary conflicts.

I had some problems with the fact that she falls in love with her cousin. I don’t really know how teen-agers will react to that part of the story, but it bothered me. Why couldn’t it have been a friend of the family, or why couldn’t Edmond be adopted?

4. REVIEW EXCERPTS

PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY Review: “This riveting first novel paints a frighteningly realistic picture of a world war breaking out in the 21st century. Told from the point of view of 15-year-old Manhattan native Daisy, the novel follows her arrival and her stay with cousins on a remote farm in England. Soon after Daisy settles into their farmhouse, her Aunt Penn becomes stranded in Oslo and terrorists invade and occupy England. Daisy's candid, intelligent narrative draws readers into her very private world, which appears almost utopian at first with no adult supervision (especially by contrast with her home life with her widowed father and his new wife). The heroine finds herself falling in love with cousin Edmond, and the author credibly creates a world in which social taboos are temporarily erased. When soldiers usurp the farm, they send the girls off separately from the boys, and Daisy becomes determined to keep herself and her youngest cousin, Piper, alive. Like the ripple effects of paranoia and panic in society, the changes within Daisy do not occur all at once, but they have dramatic effects. In the span of a few months, she goes from a self-centered, disgruntled teen to a courageous survivor motivated by love and compassion. How she comes to understand the effects the war has had on others provides the greatest evidence of her growth, as well as her motivation to get through to those who seem lost to war's consequences. Teens may feel that they have experienced a war themselves as they vicariously witness Daisy's worst nightmares. Like the heroine, readers will emerge from the rubble much shaken, a little wiser and with perhaps a greater sense of humanity. Ages 12-up.”

BOOKLIST Review: “*Starred Review* Gr. 8-11. A 15-year-old, contemporary urbanite named Daisy, sent to England to summer with relatives, falls in love with her aunt's "oldy worldy" farm and her soulful cousins--especially Edmond, with whom she forms "the world's most inappropriate case of sexual obsession." Matters veer in a startling direction when terrorists strike while Daisy's aunt is out of the country, war erupts, and soldiers divide the cousins by gender between two guardians. Determined to rejoin Edmond, Daisy and her youngest cousin embark upon a dangerous journey that brings them face to face with horrific violence and undreamt-of deprivation. Just prior to the hopeful conclusion, Rosoff introduces a jolting leap forward in time accompanied by an evocative graphic device that will undoubtedly spark lively discussions. As for the incestuous romance, Daisy and Edmond's separation for most of the novel and the obvious emotional sustenance Daisy draws from their bond sensitively shift the focus away from the relationship's implicit (and potentially discomfiting) physical dimension. More central to the potency of Rosoff's debut, though, is the ominous prognostication of what a third world war might look like, and the opportunity it provides for teens to imagine themselves, like Daisy, exhibiting courage and resilience in roles traditionally occupied by earlier generations.”


5. CONNECTIONS

The internet claims that this book is going to become a movie. Students could write about what actor and actress they think should play the characters Edmond and Daisy in the movie and why.

Students could make a display of things they would take with them if they were forced to leave their homes. What would they take with them if they had five minutes to pack. Students could explain to the class why they would take the items chosen. Students could then compare their items with other classmates.

Students could also make a chart of one of the main characters, and come up with adjectives to describe them before the war, and then after the war. Then present their display to the class.

Students could also write a paper about the changes one of the main characters goes through because of the war.