How I Live Now

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff was originally published in 2004. It is a young adult dystopian novel about an American teenager experiencing a near-future world war in England, and it won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Printz Award. In 2013, How I Live Now was adapted into a film directed by Kevin Macdonald and starring Saoirse Ronan. Rosoff also won a Carnegie Medal, a Whitbread Award, and other awards. How I Live Now explores The Process of Finding a Home, The Complexities of Love in Wartime Relationships, and The Presence of the Dead.

This guide refers to the 2006 Wendy Lamb Books paperback edition.

Content Warnings: Both the source text and this guide include descriptions of incest, self-harm, disordered eating, suicidal ideation, medical abuse, murder, and war.

Plot Summary

Set in modern times and reflecting a dystopian, alternative history, How I Live Now is narrated by 15-year-old Daisy, a New Yorker with disordered eating. When her father and her pregnant stepmother send her to live in England, Daisy meets her cousins, Piper, Edmond, Isaac, and Osbert, as well as her Aunt Penn, who is part of the anti-war efforts that have developed in response to escalating international tensions. Aunt Penn tells Daisy about her late mother before leaving for a conference in Oslo. As Daisy settles in, her cousins become concerned over her determination not to eat much food, which stems from long-held disordered eating originating from her fraught relationship with her family in New York.

After Aunt Penn leaves, the war begins. At first, Aunt Penn’s farm is untouched because the bombs only target large cities like London. As time goes on, Aunt Penn sends money to her family, but she struggles to return to England. (Later, her family will learn that she is killed in the process of trying to return home.)

Without adult supervision, Daisy and her cousins enjoy their spring days. They fish and swim in a nearby river and camp out in the lambing barn, which is about a mile from the main house and farm. Daisy develops a strong platonic relationship with Piper, and she also develops a romantic, incestuous relationship with Edmond. 

One day, soldiers claim that there is a smallpox outbreak and enforce a quarantine, but Daisy later learns that this is just a way of controlling the rural population as the war escalates. On a different occasion, a man named Dr. Jameson comes to their house looking for medicine because the army has commandeered most of the medicines and hospitals to help people injured in the war. After his visit, soldiers come and commandeer the family farm as well. No one mentions the lambing barn, so it remains untouched.

Osbert, the oldest of Daisy’s cousins, begins working for the army, and soon, the army sends Isaac and Edmond to live and work at Gateshead Farm. Meanwhile, Piper and Daisy are sent to live with Major Laurence McEvoy, his wife Jane, and their young son Alby. Edmond and Daisy discover that they are able to maintain a psychic connection while they are separated. Daisy is determined to find Edmond and learns about his location from Laurence. As time passes, she and Piper work at Meadow Brook Farm, harvesting food and herding cattle with their family’s dog.

One day, while Daisy and her coworkers are being driven back to the McEvoy’s house, Daisy’s coworker, Joe, taunts enemy soldiers at a checkpoint. They shoot him in retaliation, and when Laurence tries to recover Joe’s body, they shoot him as well. Their driver, Frankie, has to inform Jane about her husband’s death. Jane, Alby, Piper, and Daisy are moved to a barn filled with guns and soldiers. A kind soldier named Baz helps Daisy and Piper to escape and travel across the country to Gateshead Farm.

Daisy and Piper travel along footpaths in the country and avoid main roads, harvesting plants and slowly consuming the food that they and Baz collected in preparation for the trip. It is a long, difficult journey, but Daisy is still able to keep in psychic contact with Edmond. Eventually, Piper and Daisy find the river that connects Gateshead Farm to Aunt Penn’s house. One night, as they are camping, they hear voices screaming in the distance.

The next day, they discover that nearly everyone at Gateshead Farm has been massacred. Daisy looks through the corpses and finds Dr. Jameson, but she cannot find Isaac or Edmond. Daisy later learns that Edmond was forced to watch the massacre while Isaac escaped. Edmond tried to warn the people on the farm about the coming disaster, but no one believed his psychic premonition. Now, he no longer communicates psychically with Daisy.

Daisy and Piper return to Aunt Penn’s house, but because the soldiers have left it in a state of disarray, the girls decide to stay in the lambing barn for a while. They subsist on food from the farm and fish from the river, and they finally take cold baths. After they move back into the house, Daisy’s father calls and forces her to return to the US. He has her hospitalized for her disordered eating, only to discover that Daisy has overcome it and is happy to eat after struggling with food during her long journey.

Daisy meets her newly born half-sister, gets a job at the New York Public Library, and gets her own place. Six years pass before the borders are reopened, at which point Daisy’s father uses his connections to make sure that she is one of the first people to travel to England. Back at the farm, Piper now has a boyfriend named Jonathan, and Isaac has become the local animal expert. Osbert has moved in with his girlfriend, but he visits the family farm regularly. Edmond is traumatized and has been self-harming to cope with his memories of the massacre. He blames Daisy for leaving.

Eventually, Daisy talks with Edmond about her experiences and her love for him. She chooses to stay at the farm, working to grow food with Isaac and Piper, and she also works in the flower garden alongside Edmond. She supports Edmond as much as she can and patiently waits for him to heal.