I started out liking this book. It was refreshing to get to know Rome and its history through the eyes of 9-year-old Lawrence who ends up there with his mother and little sister. They are trying to get away from their father, but Lawrence's narration very early on drops hints that there is something wrong with his mother. Things are not always they way they seem, or the way they should be for that matter. In a well-ordered world, parents look after their children rather than turning their worlds inside out.

Mom is unpredictable and, though she seems to love her children, they sense the strangeness of their situation and their little adventure quickly goes downhill. The invented spelling didn't bother me too much, but I got tired of all the whining. Granted, these kids had plenty to whine about, but it seemed excessive and grated on me.

This book has been compared to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; however, it fails to deliver the same quality of charm and fascination. It just made me want to reread Mark Haddon's far superior book. ( )

Matthew Kneale won the Whitbread Prize with his book "English Passengers", which I have not read. He is the son of Judith Kerr and Nigel Kneale, both well-known writers.

This book takes big chances with its structure, relating a story from the perspective of a nine-year-old boy, complete with spelling errors, concrete thinking and a level of immaturity that is well captured with the prose. For me, the risk definitely pays off, achieving a very effective characterization of this heroic little guy.

Lawrence is a nine year old with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Despite some sibling rivalry and immature reactions to his situation, his behaviour through-out the story is admirable. Lawrence and his little sister are taken on a trip to Rome by his mother, who is fleeing from a supposedly stalking ex-husband.

Lawrence takes the role of protector and counselor as he is placed in situations requiring more maturity that he possesses. We get amusing asides in Roman history and cosmology that provide some relief from the bleaker, distressing aspects of his experiences.

As a mother, my heart bled for Lawrence and his predicaments. Although his situation becomes very obvious to the adult reader early on, his reactions and stoicism are poignant and effective. It is a difficult perspective to write, and to sustain the naïve immature voice through-out is an obvious challenge, with some resulting flatness of the narrative in the middle portion. Yet the child’s voice is never written as flippant or comedic, but has restraint and empathy. To have varied the voice between characters would have ruined it, and I thought it was very successful.

Despite a foreseeable ending, the rise of mental illness pushes the novel to a satisfying end.

It is a lovely, haunting and memorable novel. ( )

A current day story told from the perspective of a nine year old boy of their family's (Mother, son and daughter) travel to Rome to escape from their father who is perceived by the Mother as being predatory.

The thinking, perspective and voice of nine year old Lawrence seems very true for that age. The ending is very touching and satisfying. ( )

Children are taught to trust their parents, but what happens in a family when the parent cannot be trusted? This question is played out in When We Were Romans. Kneale writes this story from the point of view of nine year old Lawrence with a tumultuous family life, complete with spelling errors and all the confusion of a young child lacking enough knowledge to understand his situation. As others have mentioned, the reader knows the likely story development long before the nine year old narrator (personally I found the ending to be utterly predictable), but this makes the story all the more engrossing. The important part of this novel is not any individual event, but the perception of and reaction to the events by Lawrence. Overall, I enjoyed this book and would recommend id. I found some parts to be slow, but the authentic voice and experiences of Lawrence kept it moving. ( )

The problem with writing a novel entirely from the perspective of a nine-year-old boy, is that children of that age have no deep insights, wider perspectives, or analytical abilities. By the end of this, I was screaming for an adult viewpoint, as the "development" of the story was (by definition) going nowhere fast. It didn't help that Lawrence is an often unpleasantly manipulative child, and it is not until the - admittedly exciting and unexpected - climax that we discover clues as to why this is so (and I won't give away the ending, of course).

In other respects the story succeeds - Lawrence's boyish obsessions (cosmology, Roman Emperors, etc) make entertaining asides; his penchant for finding which "animal" any adult is most represented by, charms; and his sister Jemima is the most perfectly drawn toddler I've seen in literature : totally self-centred, reactive, living entirely "in the moment", full of petty innocence.

A mild irritation is the spelling - Lawrence is actually quite a good speller for his age and stumbles at all the likely places, though getting some difficult words right. So far, so good. Why then, is he so utterly hopeless with all place names? Even Ikea, whose name he must have seen in giant letters on the store front, he gets wildly wrong. This is an inconsistency that constantly nagged throughout my reading.

I wanted so hard to like this book more than I did. But we readers were trapped in a childishly paranoid and manipulative mind, and by the end, I was heartily glad to be rid of Lawrence. ( )