What I Was

Booklist

Rosoff writes with startling acuity about a young person's search for self and for meaningful connection... this anguished story is sure to attract a crossover audience of older teens, as well as adults, who will appreciate Rosoff's questions about the nature of time, memory, and the events that become, over a life's arc, the defining moments.

People

This is a richly patterned work about secrets, what the tide hides and reveals and how an innocent crush can utterly change everything.

San Francisco Chronicle

There is magic, power and mystery in the novel, without anyone ever waving a wand.

Washington Post

This whole novel is built on a surprise (which caught me totally unaware), but beyond the surprise lies the beauty of what it means to live without junk in your life, only essential beauty, together with the reminder that all of it—the junk and the beauty—will be gone in a twinkling. This is a lovely book.

Los Angeles Times

What I Was shows us a more confident author whose poetry lies in her elegant, straightforward descriptions of human activity—cooking crabs, climbing a chalk cliff, learning to sail—instead of lurid embellishment. The result is a beautifully crafted tale that seems, like its protagonist, both enduringly old and fluently new.

Boston Globe

(Rosoff's) portrayal of adolescent awakening is intimate and thoroughly persuasive.

Carolyn See

This whole novel is built on a surprise (which caught me totally unaware), but beyond the surprise lies the beauty of what it means to live without junk in your life, only essential beauty, together with the reminder that all of it—the junk and the beauty—will be gone in a twinkling. This is a lovely book.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

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. (Jan.)

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Library Journal

Growing up is tough to do. The narrator of Rosoff's foray into adult literature has been shuffled through two upper-class boarding schools and now is on his third. His tenure at St. Oswald's looks tenuous as well until one day during a long run along the coastline. Taking a break from the mandatory exercise, our narrator meets Finn, who lives alone in a small hut near the beach free from school and parents. The two boys come together in an idyllic friendship that eventually ends in tragedy. Rosoff, the Printz Award-winning author of How I Live Now, creates a coming-of-age tale full of mystery and angst. Relying on a narrator looking back at his life, the reader is in for an intriguing read. Recommended for larger collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ9/15/07.]
—Robin Nesbitt

School Library Journal

Adult/High School- The poignant reminiscences of an old man about the life-changing experiences of his 16th year are recounted with spellbinding immediacy and evocative language. Events take place in 1962, in a boy's boarding school on the sinking coastline of East Anglia. The cynical narrator has been expelled from two other boarding schools and longs for freedom from the sadistic discipline, cruel bullying, and mind-numbing curriculum. He wants to be free like Finn, the young teen who lives alone in a fisherman's hut by the sea. For most of the book the narrator's name is withheld. Readers know only that he is lonely, self-conscious, and yearns to be strong and independent. Finn welcomes him somewhat reluctantly, but soon the two meet regularly and a deep (if one-sided) emotional attachment is formed. Finn instructs his awkward new friend in the ways of survival and the history of this remote place as they explore the sinking rugged coast with its mysterious coves and ancient forts. The narrator disregards curfew as he regularly sneaks out of St. Oswald's School, recklessly racing the incoming tides and the undertow in order to arrive at Finn's cottage. Love and friendship are a dominant theme of the book. As the narrator's obsession with Finn and Finn's romantic medieval existence deepens, he becomes insensitive to the yearning friendship of a fellow classmate, with tragic results. Readers may have suspicions as to Finn's true identity but will believe sympathetically in the narrator's naïveté and be greatly moved by his story.-Jackie Gropman, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA

Kirkus Reviews

An extraordinary account of an obsessive friendship between a prep-school misfit and a beautiful orphan. As the book opens, the 16-year-old narrator-unnamed until the final pages-is entering his third prep school in as many years. The latest, St. Oswald's School for Boys, on an isolated coast of England, practices a bracing rigidity that forbids heat and buttons on clothing, amongst other things. The narrator shows his disdain for the rules with apathy rather than rebellion, until the day he meets Finn on a nearby beach. The narrator is immediately intrigued by the quiet boy with impossibly perfect, delicate features, particularly when he learns that since his grandmother died four years earlier, Finn has lived autonomously in a hut on the beach. With no birth registration or immediate family, it has been easy for Finn to slip under the radar, avoiding school and society in general. The narrator's interest turns to infatuation, and soon he is sneaking out of the school to visit Finn every chance he gets, including hatching an elaborate lie that allows him to spend an entire school holiday at Finn's hut. The only stumbling block is his roommate, Reese, whose own homoerotic tendencies implore him to find out more. But the narrator's carefully constructed world crumbles when St. Oswald's goes under quarantine for glandular fever, and he passes the disease along to his secret friend. Though he tries to nurse Finn back to health, the strain becomes too much, and on a devastating night, one that implicates Reese as well, the narrator is forced to unite his two worlds, and learns that mysterious Finn has been harboring a secret of his own. Rosoff's voice is clear and her story is simple, butwith it she delivers a profound amalgamation of deeper themes. Great Expectations meets Death in Venice in this visceral, intensely surprising tale from Rosoff (Just in Case, 2006, etc.).