What I Was

by Meg Rosoff (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.25

  'I am a century old, an impossible age, and my brain has no anchor in the present. Instead it drifts, nearly always to the same shore: the year I discovered love'. In the early sixties on an East Anglian beach, a fragile wooden hut is harried daily by the sea. It is ignored by the boys from the nearby boarding school who stumble past on their birch-enforced runs. Until the day, one sixteen-year-old boy stops and comes face to face with the hut's owner: enigmatic, beguiling, and beautiful Finn. The hut and the beach - but most of all Finn - provide a haven away from the petty rules and bullies. But they also hold a mysterious, fragile secret. A secret that will be tested by friendship, growing adolescent love and the terrifying fury of the sea.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.25

  Meg Rosoff, multi award winning author of How I Live Now, explores the pain of first love and coming-of-age in her compelling novel What I Was, which was once described by The Times as 'Samuel Beckett on ecstasy.' Shall I tell you about the year I discovered love? I'd been kicked out of two boarding schools and the last thing I wanted was to be here, on the East Anglian coast, in a third. But without St Oswald's, I would not have discovered the fisherman's hut with its roaring fire, its striped blankets, its sea monster stew. Without St Oswald's, I would not have met the boy with the beautiful eyes, the flickering half-smile, and no past. Without St Oswald's I would not have met Finn. And without Finn, there would be no story. Shall we begin? ' . . . thrilling and sensitively told' - Observer ' . . . mordantly funny and searingly well written' - The Times Bestselling author Meg Rosoff has received great critical acclaim since the publication of her first novel How I Live Now (winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize). Her other novels, Just in Case (winner of the 2007 Carnegie Medal) and The Bride's Farewell, are also available from Puffin. Follow Meg on Twitter @megrosoff.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $3.25

  'I was at boarding school in East Anglia, my third. I didn't want to be there. But if there had been no school, there would be no Finn. He lived in a hut on the coast. He was like the hut, in fact - it took a while for both of them to warm up. But that is all I longed for. Finn, warming to me. A nod. Half a smile. Asking me to help on the boat. Not asking me to leave. I didn't want it to end. Now I am waiting for the end, and looking back to the beginning.' Haunting, intense and with a surprising twist in the tale - What I Was is unlike anything you will have read before.