'What I Was' : reviewed by Megan van de Loo

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What I Was

Reviewed by Megan van de Loo

What I Was is a book about a boy who felt an emotion he had never felt before, love. This love was found while at his third boarding school after being expelled from two others. This school was crazy enough to except anyone. It was named after a saint, St Oswald.

He finds a friend in a boy who usually blends into the background of the coastal life but that day he didn’t: that day he was noticed. His friend Finn didn’t say much in this book but this was because he wasn’t used to socialising after blending in and not being noticed and living solo. The nameless boy who tells this story got used to it and had to get on with it and had to join things together that he did know to create new things that he didn’t know. For example here is a quotation taken from the book: ‘ I concentrated trying to produce a clear picture from these fragments of a family tree’. Towards the end the silence and mystery is revealed and a shock for most people including the boy.

I have really taken pleasure in the reading of this book; it’s full of mysteries to the nameless boy and also the reader. To me this was a book I could never put down and it just got better and better as the story matured. To me this is a best seller and I am glad that it was successfully chosen as one of the seven books we had to read.