When I Was

A 'Writer's Review' BOOK OF THE YEAR - "Engaging, perceptive and compassionate, this is a novel that’s hard to put down."

1953. Viola is three. The young Queen of
England is being crowned on a television in the corner of the room. Tubby little
Viola gazes out at the party guests in this fancy London house, already alert
to human drama.

This is a genteel family in gentle crisis
as they have to move from a large house to a tiny flat. Viola’s Anglo-Indian
mother hoped for much more from life, while her father gets involved in
ghosting the memoir of a chorus girl who married a millionaire. Viola burrows
into the adventures of storybooks and battles her three older brothers for
attention. A decade passes, and Viola finds friendship and danger among the old
and the young. 1950s London with its bomb sites, air raid shelters and
attitudes to gender, race, class and sex is vividly present. When I Was provides
a delicious, memorable portrait of the writer as a young girl.