What I Was (original 2007; edition 2008)

I think Meg Rosoff is writing some of the most relevant YA fiction out there. She is literary, accessible, in charge of her own language, and most importantly, she is not afraid to pose and explore questions that don't really have any good answers just yet.

For instance, this book is, in part, about gender. It's about gender without being "about gender." And since it's not "about gender," it manages to get at the heart of some truly complicated issues surrounding gender variance and queer identity.

I've read so many books about queer kids coming of age - fantasy world books like boy meets boy; truly issue-driven books like parrotfish; sad, sad beaten down books like house of stairs...but here is Meg Rosoff, pulling the experience out of the hands of the hetero/homo, male/female binary, and offering something that feels revolutionary, novel.

So, hats off, Meg Rosoff. I don't see anyone else out there doing what you are doing.

( )

I think Meg Rosoff is writing some of the most relevant YA fiction out there. She is literary, accessible, in charge of her own language, and most importantly, she is not afraid to pose and explore questions that don't really have any good answers just yet.

For instance, this book is, in part, about gender. It's about gender without being "about gender." And since it's not "about gender," it manages to get at the heart of some truly complicated issues surrounding gender variance and queer identity.

I've read so many books about queer kids coming of age - fantasy world books like boy meets boy; truly issue-driven books like parrotfish; sad, sad beaten down books like house of stairs...but here is Meg Rosoff, pulling the experience out of the hands of the hetero/homo, male/female binary, and offering something that feels revolutionary, novel.

So, hats off, Meg Rosoff. I don't see anyone else out there doing what you are doing.

( )

Rosoff has written another moving book. Though the big reveal struck me as less surprising than perhaps it was supposed to, the story is a deep and satisfying one. My favorite passage:
"Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved."

A lovely little book. Rosoff's style is so understated that I don't realize how far in I've gone till the end, when it takes me a long time to surface. ( )

Hmm, an odd little story. I'm surprised we didn't catalog it (or it wasn't published) as YA.
Maybe a little too "lyrical" for me. ( )

F Rosoff