What I Was by
Meg RosoffMy rating:
2 of 5 starsI started reading this book before Christmas and I just can't seem to finish it. I fell in love with Rosoff's writing with How I Live Now - what an amazing book that was - but this novel is missing something.
*EDIT* I don't know what happened, but yesterday I just felt like I couldn't abandon this book and I finished it. I'm glad I did. The second half of the book picks up and slides back into Rosoff's comfortable prose. She just has a way of creating a magic bubble around her characters so for moments in their lives they exist in their idea of a perfect world. Of course that bubble can't be permanent and something has to ruin it or soil it. In the end nobody gets what they set out to want, and though things are different the character's aren't unhappy. Thee characters accept that things are what they are now, and sometimes that is the price of stealing momentary happiness.
I felt like this novel was missing something, a certain amount of heart perhaps. We weren't left with any kind of closure with the main character, known as H, who admits he is entirely unreliable as a narrator. For a minute I thought perhaps his best friend might just be some sort of invented phantom he was projecting to interact with the person he wanted to be (I'm explaining that poorly - sort of like Fight Club). H seems squishy, soft, doesn't take any personal accountability for his life, and he needs this external character to model on to make a change in his life, but then he doesn't make any change for about 2/3 of the novel so we're stuck listening to his internal monologue idolizing his best friend/hinted love interest. He is borderline obsessive and stops investing in his real life so he can sink further into his idealized life with his friend.
What really annoyed me was the twist, which I won't reveal, but I felt it took something away from H's personal struggle with his identity and reality. All in all I was disappointed with this book and I wouldn't recommend it for fans of Rosoff's writing. She doesn't really come into her voice until it's too late.
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