What I Did - Paperback

by Christopher Wakling (Author)

"This is family life today at its most believable: warm and messy, bored and raging....I LOVED IT."
--Emma Donoghue, author of the New York Times bestseller Room

What I Did by Christopher Wakling is a truly astonishing novel--the chronicle of a family crisis that is equal parts hilarity, poignancy, and horror, told in the singular voice of a most precocious youngster. Room meets The Slap meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Wakling's tour de force concerns one rash act that pitches a six-year-old boy and his hapless parents into the center of a social services maelstrom. What I Did is contemporary fiction at its most enthrallingly original--poignant, powerful, and extremely funny--a miraculous work that prompted London's Daily Mail to declare it "the novel that should have won the Booker prize."

Front Jacket

This is a story about a terrible thing which happens to me. I have to warn you that nobody is bad or good here, or rather everyone is a bit bad and a bit good and the bad and the good moluscules get mixed up against each other and produce terrible chemical reactions. Did you know cheetahs cannot retract their claws?

Six-year-old Billy loves animals, David Attenborough documentaries, and sneakers that flash when he runs. He does not love sitting still, the blood-soaked sky in Watership Down, or his father's cell phone.

When Billy runs into a busy street, ignoring his father's commands, he sets in motion a series of unexpected, family-altering events. What I Did is a heart-wrenching reminder of how best intentions can lead to disastrous consequences, and how one rash decision can take on a life of its own.

--Sunday Age (Melbourne)

Back Jacket

"This is a story about a terrible thing which happens to me. I have to warn you that nobody is bad or good here, or rather everyone is a bit bad and a bit good and the bad and the good moluscules get mixed up against each other and produce terrible chemical reactions. Did you know cheetahs cannot retract their claws?"

Six-year-old Billy loves animals, David Attenborough documentaries, and sneakers that flash when he runs. He does not love sitting still, the blood-soaked sky in Watership Down, or his father's cell phone.

When Billy runs into a busy street, ignoring his father's commands, he sets in motion a series of unexpected, family-altering events. What I Did is a heart-wrenching reminder of how best intentions can lead to disastrous consequences, and how one rash decision can take on a life of its own.