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Haven’t the early pages of The Lion, the Witch,
and the Wardrobe always held
untapped potential, the hint of a road not traveled? Before Lucy and the others
go blundering into the wardrobe, they inhabit a remote English country house,
their refuge from London in the Blitz. If you’ve ever wished to divert from all
the allegories and talking animals to stay and witness wartime life in the
countryside, you’ll find Meg Rosoff’s much-acclaimed teen novel How I Live
Now, especially intriguing.
Daisy is a fifteen-year-old Manhattanite sent to live with English cousins as
her father and step-mother prepare for a new baby. She’s a twenty-first century
city girl plopped down on a rustic estate out in lambs-and-vicars land, but all
she loses in cell phone signal strength she gains back in kin. Her cousins are a
small tribe of fey kids who enfold her in the gentle arms of their ancient home
and include her in their web of almost telepathic communication. With them,
Daisy – anorexic and resistant – begins to relax the strangling grip she has
long kept on herself.
Then the bombings begin.
There are explosions in London, conspiracies on the news, and fear moves into
the countryside. Rosoff introduces war as a subtle tide that washes through
Daisy’s everyday life and gradually makes it into something strange and
desperate. Her charmed world erodes as the terror attacks multiply, advance, and
eventually take her new family apart.
Rosoff’s depiction of a contemporary war that’s both immediate and oddly,
surreally distant – largely watched through the distorting lenses of television
and the Internet – rings true emotionally and speaks to our fears in the present
day. However, the glory of the book is Daisy’s fascinating and utterly
believable voice: she’s raw and self-absorbed, cynical and loving, hungry for
affection, and fiercely protective of her youngest cousin. The story has its
turns and surprises, to be sure, but it’s Daisy who will keep you following
gamely along.
How I Live Now has earned multiple British and American awards and set
the
youth literature hive buzzing. Part survival story, part a tale of illicit love
between cousins, part a vision of modern war seen through teenage eyes, it is
gripping, honest, and beautifully made. It shows us a rich, difficult world more
adult and more complicated than any Narnia. Set between childhood and maturity,
it’s the world outside the wardrobe; it’s the world we live in now.
Recommended for readers age 13 and older.
Review by Mark
David Bradshaw, March 13, 2006
Read a review of Elsewhere, a teen novel by Gabrielle Zevin:
http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0306-013.html
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