How I Live Now

Buy the Book

     How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff is my favorite book that I've read this year. It’s not new (it was published in 2004), but it still feels fresh almost a decade later. It totally took me by surprise. First off it’s technically Young Adult. Many YA books can be enjoyed by all ages but How I Live Now truly feels like it’s meant for an older audience than the typical YA target. It’s themes range from war, death, love, incest, heartbreak, and survival in extreme circumstances. If filmed literally and straight from the book this story would be R rated; not meant for teenagers at all. But it’s all delivered through the eyes and thoughts of Daisy, the 15-year-old protagonist who is basically a female Holden Caulfield. Catcher in the Rye has never been made into a movie because it’s basically not filmable. The whole thing is experienced in the head of one of the most eccentric and sarcastic main characters ever designed. I had very low expectations for the recent How I Live Now adaptation and I was right. You couldn't adapt this book properly no matter what angle you took.

     Daisy is a sarcastic, angry, angsty 15-year-old New Yorker sent off to live with her cousins in England after her widowed father marries another woman. Daisy hates her father and her new step mother and as you would expect, just about everything else in her world. She is depressed and anorexic but views and conveys her situation with so much spite and wit that you can’t help but laugh along with her telling of the story. Although not at first, Daisy becomes a truly lovable character. You just want for her to be happy in the end. A war erupts in this not-too-distant future England and Daisy is separated from her older cousins, left alone with her younger cousin Piper who she must take care of amid havoc and social anarchy. The second half of the book is a survival story. I felt so sorry for poor Daisy and little Piper that I desperately wished for their safety. I cared about them like real people.

See the Movie

     It’s such an odd book, and only works so well because it is told from the mind and words of its hilarious narrator. Take away that narrator and you have a creepy, demented story about a girl in love with her cousin in the middle of war-torn Europe. That’s how the movie feels; hollow, weird, not quite right. A really great independent low-budget film can be the best thing in the world; better than the most spectacular CGI-ridden blockbusters. But a bad independent movie can be just plain unbearable, worse than any mega-budget superhero flick that studios churn out each summer. How I Live Now is next to intolerable. All the major plot points remain but you’re not inside Daisy’s head so it just doesn't work. I found myself not liking the Daisy in the film at all, although she’s played by an actress who usually turns in nice, nuanced performances in such films as Hanna and Atonement. A book so rooted in a character’s thoughts can’t be filmed without losing the essence of the storytelling. It is lost on How I Live Now, leaving you without much to enjoy.

     The book is beautiful and skillfully written. Daisy is a wonderful and original main character. Her story is heartbreaking and vast and timeless. The filmmakers fumbled big time when adapting the story but as stated before, it would be impossible to properly adapt this book. Skip the movie, but don’t delay and read the book as soon as you can.