How I live Now

I must begin my response with the very first thing that I had a truly personal reaction to. When I first found this text in my school’s media center, I flipped through several pages throughout the book and read paragraphs at random to get a taste of the author’s style. Though I did not notice the shift in syntax (from the first part to the last) while superficially perusing the book, I did notice the stream of consciousness style of narration.

This brought me back to one of the single most frustrating experiences I had with another title a few years ago: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. This book was recommended to me by a friend after I read and loved 1984 by George Orwell. I was studying abroad in Spain at the time, and my reading time was one of the only times I had to think/immerse myself in the English language. Partly because of this, I looked forward to reading every day – I read novels on the bus to school, in plaza cafés with a coffee, at a bar with a drink while waiting for friends… you name it. The Handmaid’s Tale was one title that I simply could not get through. I got roughly 80 pages into the text before putting it down for another title. I ended up trying The Handmaid’s Tale two more times before giving up for good. It was the stream of consciousness that did it. I have a very difficult time keeping focused, and in the case of Atwood’s novel, the writing style just bothered me.

Now, a few years later and a few years older, I find myself taking a different approach to literature. While I still do not prefer the style, I found this time around that it was not nearly the stumbling block that it had been in the past. I found myself able to focus on and appreciate the aspects of the book that I did understand and enjoy. What I may have most enjoyed about this book is the authenticity of Daisy’s character. I felt that she was an honest and very real girl. She is complex – what she does not say is sometimes as important as the things she says. For instance, when she describes the train station bombing, she describes the casualties as “seven or seventy thousand people got killed.” Her seeming ignorance (or is it apathy) of the war going on around her speaks volumes, I think, about her character. I then found myself wondering if the vagueness of the war was due to Daisy’s narration (the girl will focus on what is important to her, and in the beginning of the novel, what is important to her is frolicking in the countryside with her dapper cousins).

On the other hand, I thought at times that the lack of specific detail about the war may have been Meg Rosoff choosing to stick to what she knows well, and can write well… the author has done a great job of capturing the world and innocence of a young girl, and explored the complex feelings of love for her cousin very effectively. Could it be that she is not as comfortable writing about war as she is about love and (loss of) innocence? I read some Dan Brown on a car trip a long while back, and wondered to myself all the way through why he even bothered to include a love story at all – his was putrid, and he would have been better off avoiding that which he does not write well, I think.

I prefer to believe that the former is true – that Meg Rosoff constructed a character whose world is the here and now, and whose narration reflects that world. On that same note, I came to be at peace with Daisy’s stream of consciousness – though it is not my preferred style to read, it is crucial for constructing Daisy’s character. Later in the novel, as her character changes and adapts to loss, toughens up, and needs to become more independent, her narration style changes and adapts, too. I really liked that the author did this, because it serves to allow us to see the change happening in Daisy both internally and externally – rather than just be told about what change is occurring.

As much as I did appreciate Daisy’s character, I felt the other characters – the cousins especially – fell a bit flat. I do not entirely understand the author’s choice of purposefully constructing an incestual relationship. The only thing I can think of is that it helps to establish an unsettling world and atmosphere in the text for most readers… and the world that Daisy lives in is unsettling, to say the least – so why not create feelings in the reader that are similar to what is being felt by the narrator? Additionally, I do not generally enjoy the hopeless romantic’s perspective in literature. I’m simply not that interested in Daisy’s attraction to her cousin, just as I don’t have any interest in reading titles like Twilight (since I have not read it, this may be a poor comparison – but from what I’ve been told, it seems to strike a similar chord).