Meg Rosoff. Award Laureate 2016 1
Meg Rosoff’s YA novels form a suite of existentia
l dramas in which values and norms, ideas and preconceptions are subjected to constant challenge and change. Rosoff’s work is transformative in the highest degree. She treats the question of “what if?” as both reality and thought experiment. Among YA authors, Rosoff stands out for the way she writes about young people: with respect, but also with critical, intimate scrutiny and much humor. Her first novel, How I Live Now (2004), is an unsettling depiction of war and love from a young adult’s point of view. It is both a dystopian action story and a novel about a provocative love affair between two young cousins – one of whom is only fourteen years old – that bursts the traditional bounds of the YA genre. Fifteen-year-old Daisy from New York is sent to visit relatives in England for the summer. When a war suddenly breaks out, she and her cousins must fend for themselves without adult assistance. The madness and chaos of war leave little time for reflection; or as Daisy says, “If you haven’t been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all.” How do you feel alive when your world is falling apart? The novel offers no easy answers. Daisy pays a high price for her survival, but she also reaches new insights about herself and the things worth living for. How I Live Now enjoyed tremendous success and had a significant impact on the development of the YA novel. The books that have followed her debut are all very different from one another, but all are surprising, radical, and emotionally charged. Rosoff’s body of work now includes seven YA novels and several picture books as well as a novel for adults. In sparkling prose, she paints unforgettable characters living in thorny borderlands between childhood and adult life. Their circumstances at times are difficult, even horrifying, but their stories are also shot through with love both fragile and beautiful, with empathy, and with unswerving loyalty.