CI 5442: Realistic Fiction Response #2

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started reading Meg Rosoff’s novel How I Live Now, and while I enjoyed the book, I am still trying to come to terms with everything within its pages. One of the first things I had to get used to was the lack of punctuation with quotations. This confused me at first, but after a while it was something that I was able to become comfortable with. It wasn’t until later in the book that I realized the purpose of this technique—the retrospection of Daisy’s experience in England compared to later sections of the novel that are set in the present and thus can make use of direct quotes contained by conventional use of punctuation. This clever shift compliments Daisy’s story and allows readers to sense an amount of authenticity in the creation of the tale. By framing the novel in this retrospective way, Rosoff leads the audience through pages and pages of set-up before she is able to answer the title’s question and give the reader Daisy’s life now.

One of the things I struggled with in the text was its classification in our class as realistic fiction. Although Rosoff is able to create characters and setting that are set in the present and could be real, there is enough fantastical evidence to deny its entrance into the genre of realistic fiction. The first of which is the “magical” characteristics of Daisy’s cousins and sometimes even Daisy herself. Somehow, Edmond is able to hear Daisy’s thoughts. Right after meeting Daisy at the airport, driving her home with a cigarette in hand—at the age of fourteen—“he looked at me in his funny dog way, and he said You’ll get used to it. Which was strange too because I hadn’t said anything out loud” (Rosoff 4). Later we meet Isaac—Edmond’s twin—who is extremely apathetic, except when it comes to his own family or animals, and is able to “communicate” with animals. Then there is Piper who is constantly described as being part fairy and also possesses some sort of empathetic or communicative powers herself. Later, when the girls are separated from the boys, Daisy and Edmond are able to “communicate” across great distances. The only explanation that I can make is to remember that this section of the story was supposedly written during Daisy’s time spent in a hospital, recovering after her traumatic experience in England. Perhaps, her view of things is slightly more dramatic and magical because of a lingering wistfulness to return “home” that drives her every thought, but, that is only one interpretation.

The next issue I had was the non-platonic love relationship between Daisy and her cousin Edmond. Now, my hang-up with this is most likely a construct of my society which has forever claimed that relationships with cousins should be strictly platonic. While Daisy’s relationship with Edmond was something that did grow on me due to its genuine and sweet portrayals, I did keep waiting to find out that they weren’t really cousins and thus there love wasn’t “forbidden.”

The next issue concerned the war. This one was the easiest to internalize and accept. Rosoff is clearly making a political statement against the stupidity and yet, perhaps, impending war that will cross countries and divide nations. Throughout the novel it is made clear that no one knows anything about the war’s cause. This observation is set against the absurd behavior of most adults in the story who are unable to see the pointlessness of the war and only serve to fall victim to gossip and anarchy. I think it is interesting to note that only the children—who spend almost the entire novel successfully surviving without adults—are able to clearly the war for what it is. They see how ridiculous the behavior of the adults around them is and even when they try to assist adults, they fail because they are not taken seriously, leading to dire consequences. Jonathon tells Daisy how Edmond tried to get the people at Gateshead to listen to him; “The small community was too settled and too frightened to run and hide in the woods because of something in the air and the premonition of a couple of kids. It wasn’t enough to make them leave” (Rosoff 187-188).

Overall, the text seemed to resemble the framework of a dark fairy tale. The daughter is sent away by her father and stepmother, a stepmother who doesn’t love the daughter and controls the father. The daughter goes to live with a group of magical beings in the country. They begin to care for each other and as things are just beginning to go well, something monumental occurs and they are separated. After years of struggling to stay alive and return home, eventually our heroes are back together again, trying to mend their broken relationships with love. While I love this, and Rosoff creates this new type of fairy tale beautifully, it is still difficult for me to categorize as realistic fiction without providing provisions for Daisy’s mental state of mind.

What I absolutely loved about the text was the subtle-yet-not-subtle dialogue surrounding Daisy’s battle with an eating disorder. It is interesting to see into her mind and watch as she explains her behavior regarding food. I was impressed at Rosoff’s ability to sneak this into the text without it being obvious for quite some time. At first the reader learns of Daisy’s fear that her stepmother was trying to poison her—this was something I wrote off as a humorous “evil step-mom” kind of thing. Next, we observe her not eating after arriving in England; again, this can be explained by anxiety over being in a new place. Soon though, we hear the concern of the other characters and Daisy herself admits her relationship with food; “after a while I discovered how much I liked the feeling of being hungry and the fact that it drove everyone stark raving mad and cost my father a fortune in shrinks and also it was something I was good at” (Rosoff 44). After the war begins to take its toll, Daisy begins to change her mind about food. Suddenly, there isn’t enough and being hungry isn’t as enjoyable when forced upon her. Daisy sees how thin Piper became, “which once upon a time I would have thought was a good thing and now I thought was just what happened when you’re nine years old and don’t have enough food to grow properly” (Rosoff 130). Daisy has grown and understands the pointlessness of her previous relationship with food in the same way she learns to love others more than herself. This shift in Daisy’s character allows Rosoff to broach a very difficult topic. It is important that readers can identify with a character that is able to justify their behavior and is led into different thinking by their own realizations. Rosoff gives them a chance to see how Daisy’s eating disorder becomes ridiculous to her in her own time; it is a realization that is self-activated and not pushed upon her by an authority figure.

Rosoff was able to create a modern day tale that combines elements of reality and fae by drawing readers into a possible future for our world. I think I would need to read the book again and come to terms with the more unconventional aspects of the story before I could present it to a class—something I would like to be able to do in time.