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.