What I Was

Meg Rosoff

Puffin

0141383437

Aug 2007

‘It may sound fanatical to time everything out so carefully, but minutes were what we lived by: stolen minutes, minutes between lessons, four minutes to smoke a fag, twenty minutes for a pint at the pub, free periods during which forged exam papers or contraband could be purchased.’

Rosoff writes in a nowhere time that paradoxically is anytime and everytime, she writes about nobody that is anybody and somehow everybody.
In her latest novel, the slow submergence of the Suffolk coastline emphasises the inevitable movement away from childhood and into adulthood with all the efficacy of the Tick Tock of Barrie’s interminable, crocodile-swallowed, clock.
Rosoff explores a childhood that, divorced from the rigour and regime of adult influence is empowered and free. Written in retrospect, the novel recounts one boy’s complete, obsessive infatuation with another’ The latter youth, Finn, is a Thoreau-like figure who has returned to a more basic, less pressured style of existence. Refuge from the outside world is broken when Finn becomes ill, however. It becomes apparent then that Finn is not the person he was seen as being. Gender, sexuality and an assumed knowledge about ourselves and others combine in this delicately wrought novel.