What I Was

What I Was

Author: Meg Rosoff

A strange story, one that still leaves me uncomfortable, as though I missed something important and so didn’t quite ‘get’ what it was all about.

A first person narrative guides us through attendance at a gloomy, miserable boarding school, where regimented passivity and bullying are the main challenges to the day. The only escape is to a run-down cottage where a boy, living outside of society, enjoys a solitary life in the wild.

As with Rosoff’s first novel, How I Live Now, this is an intimate and poignant glimpse at one teenager’s awkward and turbulent coming of age. There’s something a little bit Catcher in the Rye here - likely it’s the dry dark humour bringing this to mind. The theme of love, of passion and yearning, is nicely tangled with confusion over identity and gender.

But in the end, there seemed little point to the Big Reveal – I was so sure the story was going somewhere very different, that I almost felt cheated with where it did go. There seemed to be little learned, and few consequences, and no exploration of the impact such a Reveal had on the main character – and I was left feeling I’d read something interesting, but with an unsatisfying resolution.

Here lies Arthur

Here Lies Arthur

Author: Philip Reeve

Here’s a Dark Ages Arthurian story; no magic, no high romanticism, and no chivalrous Lancelot. The story of Arthur is told through Gwyna’s voice, a young girl who is apprenticed to Myrddin. Gwyna is disguised as a boy for safety early in the story, and as the story unfolds she switches between male and female in response to changing circumstance. She becomes the ‘Lady in the Lake’ for Myrddin, and learns how easy it is to manufacture magical stories that grow with each retelling.

It is Myrddin’s role as bard to embellish the everyday tales of reality until they become mythical and majestic – and this is such a powerful theme carried right through this story. The ill-fated romance between the lovely character of Bedwyr and Arthur’s wife Gwenhwyfar, emphasizes the price of deceit and betrayal.

There’s a harsh feel to this story - life is tough, and battles are full of mud and blood and wounds and death. This Arthur is a brutal war-lord, and it is left to his bard to make his exploits presentably ‘heroic’ for the commoners.

An interesting and thoughtful reworking of the Arthurian tale.