Wednesday, November 10, 2010

How I Live Now- Meg Rosoff

*I wish I could give this book both 3 and 5 stars*


I really struggled in deciding whether to give this book 3 or 5 stars. Yes, you read that correctly. Not 4 or 5, or even 3 or 4... but 3 or 5.

The first way to describe this book is, in my opinion, strange. Very good, but definitely strange. This story is about love, lust, family, perseverance, survival, war, eating disorders, depression.... ya, it's all over the map. That combined with the very unique (and slightly annoying at first) writing style with run on sentences, improper punctuation and random capital letters, is what makes this book so different and hard for me to rate.

At first, I thought "nope- this is just to different for me, I'm not going to like it", but by about the middle of the book I was captivated and totally engaged with the characters. Seeing a story of war from a child perspective, with very little adult influence was very fascinating and very honest.

Daisy is an incredibly interesting MC with a lot of flaws. I think the most interesting aspect of the story is watching her grow and mature emotionally out of necessity for survival. He commitment to Piper is incredibly interesting and I think it's what saves her and gives her the power to keep going.

The Edmund story line was..... just..... weird. Perhaps I missed something, but I really didn't understand the necessity of their familial ties. I got the intensity, but why in inappropriateness? This is where I struggled.

However, this book takes you on an emotional journey that's both sad, terrifying and hopeful. It's the uniqueness of the book that makes it so captivating and I really recommend it.

1 comment:

Amanda said...

I absolutely loved this book, but I did have reservations about it as well. There is that one relationship that seems so unnecessary, but provides so much power in the story.