How I Live Now: On the Fence, Apparently

I had no idea what this book was about before reading it.  I heard that it started slow and got better, but I was clueless about the content.  I also forgot that this was dystopian book week, so when this was revealed in the book it was a big shock to me.  I thought it was a story about cousins who fall in love, not some alternate reality war book.

I moved through several different phases as I read the book.  At first I liked it because of its interesting language and unique descriptions of things.  After awhile I grew to hate the main character and thought she was not that great of a person.  Then, for the last quarter or so, I didn't know how I felt about the book.  I thought that some of her imaginative, poetic descriptions were amazing.  I enjoyed reading them.  I enjoyed the feelings they evoked.  At the same time, I got kind of sick of them.  It was too much after awhile, but then I would read a passage that was just terrific.  The whole book has kind of a dreamlike feel to me.  It all seems so unreal, probably because of the writing style.  The poetry of the prose and the long run-on sentences make the events seem more surreal than they would if the book was written in a more standard way. 

I like to figure out the message of books and movies and I couldn't do it with this one.  Love conquers all?  There's always hope?  Be thankful for what you have?  Live an environmentally responsible life?  War is hell?  Live a simple life?  Maybe I totally missed the message this time.  Maybe the author didn't have a clear message in mind.  I think Edgar Allen Poe, or maybe it was Lovecraft, said that the point of writing was to evoke certain emotions in the reader.  That seems to be what Rosoff attempted (and succeeded, in me) to be doing here.  Would I recommend this book?  No, because I didn't really like the story or the characters.  For me, the only thing to be gleaned from this book is many emotional reactions, which someone else may not feel when they read it.  I'm glad I read it, but I'm not sure if I enjoyed it and I wouldn't read it again.  Rosoff sure knows how to create feelings in a reader though.