In How I Live Now, the narrator’s mum has died and her dad has sent her to England to stay with her cousins who are wild marauders who live in a large country house. War breaks out while she’s there. The interesting thing in this novel is that—unlike Ann in Z is for Zachariah who is quite self-contained and quite spartan throughout—the How I Live Now narrator has very teenage preoccupations and energy and spunk, and the war is happening at great remove from them until it suddenly intervenes.
Our most recommended books
-
Olivetti
by Allie Millington -
Finding Home: Amazing Places Animals Live
Mike Unwin, Jenni Desmond (illustrator) -
Houses with a Story
by Seiji Yoshida & translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash -
Gut Garden: A journey into the wonderful world of your microbiome
by Katie Brosnan -
Watership Down
by Richard Adams -
Sulwe
by Lupita Nyong'o & Vashti Harrison (illustrator)
Commentary