About this ebook
In 1962, a 16-year-old boy is dropped off by his father at a boarding school on the windswept coast of East Anglia. It is a model of its kind–the rooms are freezing, the food is disgusting, the older boys are sadistic, and the masters are the ineffectual, damaged castoffs of a dying Empire.
But the boy is used to the drill and well practiced at detached dreaming, imagining himself someone else, somewhere else. Until one day, falling behind one of the regular runs along the coast, he meets Finn.
Finn seems like a character from a novel, or a dream. Dressed in clothes that look the way they did a century before, Finn lives alone with his cat in a tiny fisherman’s hut. The two become friends, the boy risking scandalous rumour and expulsion from school.
But the idyll cannot last, disaster invades from all sides, and the boy discovers that nothing has been what he believed.
What I Was will cement Meg Rosoff’s reputation as a writer of extraordinary skill and sensitivity, who recreates with uncanny exactness the passions of youth.
But the boy is used to the drill and well practiced at detached dreaming, imagining himself someone else, somewhere else. Until one day, falling behind one of the regular runs along the coast, he meets Finn.
Finn seems like a character from a novel, or a dream. Dressed in clothes that look the way they did a century before, Finn lives alone with his cat in a tiny fisherman’s hut. The two become friends, the boy risking scandalous rumour and expulsion from school.
But the idyll cannot last, disaster invades from all sides, and the boy discovers that nothing has been what he believed.
What I Was will cement Meg Rosoff’s reputation as a writer of extraordinary skill and sensitivity, who recreates with uncanny exactness the passions of youth.
Ratings and reviews
4.0
1 review
A Google user
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March 28, 2012
Loved this book! Was the first book i read by Meg Rosoff, I after this book I will read more. Brilliant story line but a little hard to get into at the start, the ending is really unexpected and brilliant!
About the author
Meg Rosoff was born in Boston and now lives in London with her husband and daughter. Her debut novel How I Live Now was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award, shortlisted for a Costa (Whitbread) Award and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. It is being made into a film by Passion Pictures. Her second novel, Just In Case, won the 2007 CILIP Carnegie Medal and was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.
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