This obviously went over very badly with the populace at large and was pretty scary etc. but to be honest it didn’t seem to have that much to do with us way off in the country."Everything from the war is described similarly in this impersonal, disinterested manner. It frustrated me to no ends. Daisy does grow up, she does mature...she does wake up from her ostrich-in-the-sand status when things literally hit close to home, and her character grows in complexity, although so gradually that I hardly noticed it happening myself. I actually enjoyed the subtlety of her character development.

As Daisy and Edmond fall in not-so-chaste love, her Aunt Penn, who appears to be some sort of international peacekeeper, is summoned to Oslo in an attempt to avert the threatened war. (The action takes place in a kind of parallel present or near future.) The unworldly, though not entirely innocent, English children and their sophisticate cousin are left to fend for themselves as the fighting breaks out. Initially, they experience the war chiefly as a glorious absence of adults. Assured, powerful, engaging . . . you will want to read everything that Rosoff is capable of writing' - ObserverMeg Rosoff has written an impressive novel about war, survival and teenage love. The story is told from the point of view of Daisy, the smart and courageous protagonist. The way in which the story is told and the fact that not much is said about who the enemy is, or why this Third World War has started, really puts the focus on the victims of the conflict and the struggles they face because of it.

How I Live Now" is Meg Rosoff's first novel. It is a Printz Award winner (an award for excellence in young adult literature), the Branford Boase Award for a first novel, as well as the Guardian award for Children's Literature.

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It would be much easier to tell this story,' Daisy explains, 'if it were all about a chaste and perfect love between Two Children Against The World At An Extreme Time in History, but let's face it, that would be a load of crap.' How I Live Now is the first-person story of Daisy, a smart, stroppy, self-absorbed 15-year-old who arrives from New York's Upper West Side to stay with her English cousins. The four cousins are romantic, bohemian and enjoy an eccentric, faintly feral pastoral idyll of an existence in a rambling English country house, mystically in touch with nature and, indeed, with Daisy. But that soon changes, and they find themselves in the middle of it. Daisy's aunt is stranded in Oslo, as all the airports are closed, so the children are still left alone. Finally the army arrives at their doorstep and the children are sent away. Daisy and her youngest cousin, Piper, are sent West, whereas the others, including Daisy's lover, Edmond, are brought to a place in the East. The beautiful life alone on the farm is over and Daisy faces a whole new challenge trying to survive war and the resulting starvation, and finding Edmond again. Anyway, I’m looking and looking and everyone’s leaving and there’s no signal on my phone and I’m thinking Oh Great, I’m going to be abandoned at the airport so that’s two countries they don’t want me in, when I notice everyone’s gone except this kid who comes up to me and says You must be Daisy. And when I look relieved he does too and says I’m Edmond. Then Osbert got up and left, he’s sixteen and the oldest in case I didn’t say it, which is a year older than me. Piper asked if I wanted to see the animals, or just lie down for a while, and I said lie down because even before I left New York I hadn’t exactly been getting my fair share of sleep. She looked disappointed, but only for a second, and really I was feeling so much more tired than polite that I hardly cared.