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Title details for What I Was by Meg Rosoff - Available

What I Was

by Meg Rosoff
Geoffrey Howard
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

What I Was is a beautifully crafted and heartbreakingly poignant coming-of-age tale that is set mainly in a hut on an isolated strip of land in East Anglia. The narrator is an older man who recounts the story of his most significant friendship—that with the nearly feral and completely parentless Finn, who lives alone in a hut by the sea. He idolizes Finn and spends as much time with him at the beachside hut as possible, hoping to become self-reliant and free instead of burdened by the boarding school dress code and curfew. But the contrast between their lives becomes ever more painful, until one day the tables turn and everything our hero believes to be true explodes—with dire consequences.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 24, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781481544467
      • File size: 135224 KB
      • Duration: 04:41:42

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1090
    • Text Difficulty: 7-9

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      An award-winning young adult author writes a coming-of-age tale for adults set in the mid-twenty-first century. The unnamed narrator is miserable with his looks, his parents, boarding school life, and his own apathy. He stumbles on Finn, a beautiful boy who lives self-sufficiently in a small beach hut not far from the school. From that point, the narrator begins to take risks, having finally found something that makes sense of his life. The story depends heavily its setting--an isolated British coast--and Ralph Cosham's clear, articulate accent fits the protagonist and his world. While Cosham's delivery is devoid of great emotion--as if to represent the hero's hollowness--his reading becomes slightly breathy near the end, when the story's developing drama comes to a climax. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 15, 2007
      Former YA author Rosoff delivers an affecting buddy story about two adolescent boys in 1960s Britain. An unnamed man recounts his time as a disgruntled student at St. Oswald’s boarding school; upon ditching an outdoor physical education class jog, he stumbles upon a mysterious fellow teen named Finn who lives alone and off the grid in a hut by the sea. The protagonist, enraptured by his newfound friend, makes it his business to spend as much time as possible with Finn, a major challenge considering school curfews and that the hut can only be accessed during low tide. Weeks go by and Finn falls ill, setting the stage for a surprising revelation that will dramatically transform both boys. Rosoff’s unconventional coming-of-age tale is elegantly crafted, though some readers might be turned off by the narrator’s unrelenting cynicism (particularly in his handling of another Oswald schoolboy), and the warning shots the narrator fires off about global warming are unnecessary. Nonetheless, Rosoff elegantly portrays how we often become who we need to be.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1090
  • Text Difficulty:7-9

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