When We Were Romans
Kneale, Matthew

Description

I’ve just finished this and loved it. I wasn’t at all sure for the first 30 pages, predominantly as it’s written in the style of a nine-year-old boy, complete with spelling errors and ropey punctuation. But stick with it and you are very well rewarded. It’s a brave step to write as a kid but he uses the technique to brilliant effect.

Lawrence, his hamster and his younger, headstrong sister are bundled off to Rome by car by their mother who believes her ex (their father) is stalking them. Once in Rome, she contacts her old friends from her days living there, and the family and their boxes are shunted from flat to flat, trying to settle into a new life. But it seems that old mysteries follow them wherever they go.

Desperately trying to be in control and protect his family, Lawrence struggles with his mother’s behaviour which he can’t quite understand, however grown-up he feels. As a reader you start to piece things together through the little things he observes and start to understand what he cannot see. As his world becomes ever more unstable, his desperation to build some kind of wall around his family is interlaced with funny and ironic snatches from his boyhood interests – powerful but delusional Roman Emperors, black holes and galaxies.

Paperback - Picador - 2008

Price: £7.99

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