How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff is the story of Daisy, a 15-year-old New Yorker who is sent to live with cousins she’s never met in England. While there, war breaks out, and the cousins are separated and fighting to survive and reunite. This novel takes place in the present or near-future.

 
Thought this novel is described as dystopic, I don’t really agree. To me, it is a realistic fiction novel about war. It does not involve a society that seems perfect on the outside but really isn’t on closer inspection. It involves society as we know it, and war breaks out. It is a story about love, and war. Daisy seems like a girl who has never loved anyone or felt much love from anyone, with the possible exception of her best friend, Leah. But she instantly bonds with her 4 cousins, and the love she experiences particularly for Piper and Edmond transform her. She discovers that protecting Piper and saving her have in fact led her (Daisy) to save herself from her most destructive habits.

 
Daisy’s narration was the most difficult part of the novel for me. It is told in a first-person style which reads as though Daisy is telling a story as it happens. It feels like spoken words being written down, or perhaps even more accurately, Daisy’s interior dialogue put on paper. The only things we readers see or know about are the things Daisy thinks about. There is little description of characters, no quotations to designate dialogue, and long, colloquial sentences. Meg Rosoff has written Daisy this way on purpose. It certainly gives us an understanding of how Daisy works, but leaves so many unanswered questions. What does Edmond look like (besides a sweet and hopeful mutt with a cigarette)? Are your cousins actually magical? Who is this invading army and what happened to start this war? We don’t know, because these are not things Daisy thinks about. There is definitely a reason for the author to have Daisy narrate in this way, but I found it a bit difficult to read at first. (I had this same problem with the language in Feed. I’m starting to discover that I’m not a very flexible reader, eh?)

 
One thing I would have expected from a YA novel is the love story to be a bit more fraught. Edmond and Daisy quickly and easily fall in love with each other. And though their relationship is taboo, and they both know it, there isn’t really any tension there. Daisy does not have any internal struggle about the rightness or wrongness of the relationship, and due to the farm’s extreme isolation and dearth of adults, there is no societal pressure to end the relationship. There is little tension surrounding the relationship, which seems uncommon in adolescent literature (and real relationships.)

 
There is an element of magic to the family, which Daisy neither discusses with her readers nor questions. We understand that Edmond can read her thoughts, but Daisy never thinks, “how is he doing this?” She merely comes to accept that her thoughts are shared with him. I’ll be interested to see how this comes through in the movie, because I don’t feel that there is much connection between this bit of magic and the actual story. However, when Daisy and Edmond are separated, it brings Daisy comfort to feel this connection to Edmond. Piper and Isaac also have hints of magic about them, which again, rarely plays into the story, but Daisy feels worldly and an obligation to protect them.

 
I liked the story, and how the plot played out, but it didn’t have a whole lot of meaning for me. I didn’t get much from it. Often when I finish a book and feel that I enjoyed it, but felt it was missing something, I think perhaps I just missed the deeper parts of the book. I feel that way with this book. There is just something missing to make this a complete, meaningful story for me, but most likely, the missing piece is in my own understanding. I’m looking forward to discussing this book with my group to see what others got from it.