Meg Rosoff’s coastal East Anglia of 1962 is a grey, grim and ghastly place to be, and the boys’ boarding school in which her third novel is set even more so. The protagonist is a 100-year-old man – ‘an impossible age’ – who reminisces about the year he was 16, ‘the year I found love’.
Every bit as compelling and all-encompassing as Rosoff’s first two books – the multi-award-winning ‘How I Live Now’ and her most recent ‘Just In Time’ (for which she picked up this year’s Carnegie Medal), this is another coming-of-age novel which sucks the reader whole into its universe. The awkward, sensitive narrator, whose name we don’t discover until the end, is sent to yet another school in a bid to transform him into ‘a useful member of society’ by his stern, disappointed father. The antithesis of Enid Blyton’s happy, tuck-box- sharing boarding schools, St Oswold’s is a dark and ugly place to send children. The Machiavellian boys spot the narrator for a weak link and the inevitable bullying is something he is already familiar with – ‘Rule one, trust no one.’ Out on a cross-country run, the narrator discovers Finn, a teenage boy whose birth wasn’t recorded and so lives alone in a beach shack, supporting himself through crabbing and working in the local market. The narrator becomes obsessed with the boy on the beach in a way that only those lost in first love can be.
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7 comments
I think the book was good, not soomething so good that you really look forward to reading on though. The ending was strange, not bad, but not that good either. I think there was very good description but it sweared too much.
It was 'Just in Case' not 'Just in time'. Also, Julie- way to ruin the ending. But no I agree there isn't anything which makes you sympathise with the characters, but it is a still a good book. The ending is very ambiguous, but the way gentle descriptive prose makes the book very much like the sea by which it is set. It is a slow, languid potentially heartbreaking book where very little happens but when something does happen- it is written extremely well.
I thought this book was alright, but Finn and the narrator had nothing that made me adore them, I couldn't really sympathize with them. Also, the ending was so sudden. I give it 7/10
I liked this book quite alright but the end was quite confusing! Is Finn a girl or a boy???
Can someone please explain, what was Finn;s real relationship with her mother and why was she living alon? I did not understand the end; it was oo sudden. Anyone want to clarify?
I loved this book. 9/10. The ending was a bit too sudden, though it was a great story. Brilliant.
This book is OK, but only until the end there is no excitement and there is nothing loveable about the main charachter and Finn at all.
Plus it swears too much for a young person to read, as it encourages teenagers to swear.
I would give it a 4/10