What I Was is a beautifully crafted and heartbreakingly poignant coming-of-age tale that is set mainly in a hut on an isolated strip of land in East Anglia. The narrator is an older man who recounts the story of his most significant friendship—that with the nearly feral and completely parentless Finn, who lives alone in a hut by the sea. He idolizes Finn and spends as much time with him at the beachside hut as possible, hoping to become self-reliant and free instead of burdened by the boarding school dress code and curfew. But the contrast between their lives becomes evermore painful, until one day the tables turn and everything our hero believes to be true explodes—with dire consequences.
An award-winning young adult author writes a coming-of-age tale for adults set in the mid-twenty-first century. The unnamed narrator is miserable with his looks, his parents, boarding school life, and his own apathy. He stumbles on Finn, a beautiful boy who lives self-sufficiently in a small beach hut not far from the school. From that point, the narrator begins to take risks, having finally found something that makes sense of his life. The story depends heavily its setting--an isolated British coast--and Ralph Cosham's clear, articulate accent fits the protagonist and his world. While Cosham's delivery is devoid of great emotion--as if to represent the hero's hollowness--his reading becomes slightly breathy near the end, when the story's developing drama comes to a climax. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly...
“Rosoff's unconventional coming-of-age tale is elegantly crafted….[and] portrays how we often become who we need to be.”
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