How I Live Now: Chapters 1–10

by Meg Rosoff
When war breaks out, Daisy and her cousins find themselves isolated at a farm in the English countryside. Their bond becomes unbreakable, but nothing can stop the terrible reality of the war from seeping in.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–10, Chapters 11–20, Chapters 21–29
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. dignified
    formal or stately in bearing or appearance
    My father took one look at me when I was born and must have thought I had the face of someone dignified and sad like an old-fashioned queen or a dead person, but what I turned out like is plain, not much there to notice.
    The narrator makes fun of herself here, which makes her connect even less to the adjective "dignified" (which also means "having or showing self-esteem"). Her father's perception of queenly dignity resulted in the given name of Elizabeth, but the narrator prefers to go by the plainer, weedier name of Daisy (a slangy definition of "daisy" is "something excellent or notable" but the narrator does not feel that way about herself).
  2. solemn
    dignified and somber in manner or character
    Daisy, I corrected her, and she nodded in a solemn kind of way that made me feel sure she’d remember.
    Compare with "dignified" in this list and notice how the definition contains the word. But the two adjectives are not synonymous, because "solemn" often carries a mood of sadness that is not usually connected to dignity. However, there is no sadness connected to the use of "solemn" in this example sentence, and "dignified" is paired with "sad" in the previous example sentence.
  3. indescribable
    defying expression
    Before I tell you what happened then, I have to tell you about the house, which is practically indescribable if the only sort of houses you’ve lived in before are apartments in New York City.
  4. diabolical
    extremely evil or cruel
    I felt too shy to come out of my room, so I stayed there and thought about my old home which unfortunately led to thinking about Davina the Diabolical, who sucked my father’s soul out through his you know what and then got herself knocked up with the devil’s spawn which, when it pops out, Leah and I are going to call Damian even if it’s a girl.
  5. agony
    intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain
    According to my best friend Leah, D the D would have liked to poison me slowly till I turned black and swelled up like a pig and died in agony but I guess that plan flopped when I refused to eat anything and in the end she got me sent off to live with a bunch of cousins I’d never met a few thousand miles away while she and Dad and the devil’s spawn went on their merry way.
  6. intrepid
    invulnerable to fear or intimidation
    In New York, nine-year-olds usually don’t do this kind of thing, but wait for some grown-up to do it for them, so I was impressed by her intrepid attitude but also kind of wondering if good old Aunt Penn had died and no one could figure out a good way to tell me.
    Compare this adjective to the noun "valor" in the list for Chapters 11-20--although six years older, Daisy is in awe of the intrepid nature of her English cousin. But the awe could be due to the narrator's new environment and the intrepidity can be due to the cousin's youth. This sets up a contrast to the later need for valor, which requires more mature judgments of the situation to determine the possible reactions to the dangers.
  7. distracted
    having the attention diverted especially because of anxiety
    There was a fair amount of arguing and talking at lunch and except for talking to me she didn’t get too involved but kind of observed, and overall I’d have to say that the main feeling you got from her was that she was a little distracted, I suppose because of the work she was doing.
    Compare with the antonymous "riveting" in this list. Ironically, Aunt Penn's distracted manner seems more riveting to Daisy than the arguing and talking of everyone else.
  8. imminent
    close in time; about to occur
    After looking at me for a few seconds more she put her hand up very gently and pushed the hair off my face in a way that for some reason made me feel incredibly sad and then she said in a regretful grave voice that she was sorry but she had to give a lecture in Oslo at the end of the week on the Imminent Threat of War and had work to do so would I please excuse her?
  9. jabber
    talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner
    I didn’t spend much time thinking about the war because I was bored with everyone jabbering on for about the last five years about Would There Be One or Wouldn’t There and I happen to know there wasn’t anything we could do about it anyway so why even bring the subject up.
  10. ruthless
    without mercy or pity
    Late that night I heard the phone ring somewhere in the house and I wondered if it was my father calling to say Hey I made a mistake sending my only daughter away to another country because of some scheming harpy’s ruthless whims, but by that time I was too sleepy to bother getting up and wandering around looking for a keyhole to listen at.
  11. subconscious
    just below the level of awareness
    Early the next morning I was strolling around as usual in my unpleasantly populated subconscious when I heard Edmond’s voice very close to my ear saying Daisy Wake Up!
    In Latin, "sub" means "below" and "scire" means "to know"--the level of consciousness here is below conscious and above unconscious. Although the time is early in the morning, Daisy is awake (not unconscious), but strolling around in her subconscious, she is not entirely conscious of her surroundings until she hears Edmond's voice.
  12. jagged
    having a sharply uneven surface or outline
    Edmond was driving with the rest of us crammed into the front seat and not wearing seat belts because there weren’t any and Piper singing a song I’d never heard before with a funny jagged melody and her voice as pure as an angel.
  13. futile
    producing no result or effect
    I was thinking about almost nothing except that bird and then Edmond was next to my ear whispering Skylark, and I just nodded, knowing it was futile to ask how he knew the answers to questions you hadn’t even got around to asking yet.
  14. pious
    having or showing or expressing reverence for a deity
    she was dead, which made people put on this sickening pious kind of face and say Oh I’m SO sorry, like it was their fault
  15. remedial
    tending to cure or restore to health
    I knew Aunt Penn wasn’t worried about him because I heard her say to someone that he’d speak when he was ready to speak, but all I could think was in New York that kid would have been stuck in a straitjacket practically from birth and dangled over a tank full of Educational Consultants and Remedial Experts all snapping at his ankles for the next twenty years arguing about his Special Needs and getting paid plenty for it.
  16. epicenter
    a point on the Earth's surface directly above an earthquake
    If we're about four million miles from the epicenter I’d say we stood a pretty good chance of surviving.
  17. allot
    make possible to have
    Of course everyone was talking about food shortages and shutting down transportation and calling up all the able-bodied men and basically all the Gloom and Doom stuff they could possibly think up in the limited time allotted...
  18. picturesque
    suggesting or suitable for an artistic composition
    Well I couldn’t take much more of all the blah blah blah so Edmond and I walked down the long hill to the village which was extremely picturesque and full of little houses all connected up and made out of the same yellowy stone as our house.
  19. carnage
    the savage and excessive killing of many people
    We went in, and with the money Aunt Penn left for the weekend bought as much bottled water and canned things as we could carry home which was a lot more fun than staring at the same old picture of smoking carnage on TV and we tried to be very mature about the kind of food we might need in a siege, which let’s face it, wasn’t the most likely scenario for the back of beyond.
  20. provisions
    a stock or supply of foods
    So Piper and Isaac and Edmond and I started dragging provisions and blankets and books up to the lambing barn, which was usually just used to store hay, and except for the mice it was comfortable and dry and had water for when it was used for lambing...
  21. crestfallen
    brought low in spirit
    Since none of us was short of protein except me and I was used to it, we managed to convince her to save the worm powder for a rainy day and she looked a little crestfallen but didn’t press the point.
  22. forage
    collect or look around for, as food
    While she was foraging for food Isaac arrived from the house with a big straw bag full of cheese and ham and a fruitcake in a tin and dried apricots and a big bottle of apple juice and a thick slab of plain chocolate wrapped in brown paper.
  23. gravitate
    move toward
    The next day, without actually saying that we were abandoning our plan to live in the barn we kind of gravitated back toward the house to have a bath and get clean clothes because if you want to know the truth about how romantic it is to sleep in a barn, it isn’t very, due to the hay itching and the bats and how cold it gets at night even though it’s supposed to be spring.
  24. abstract
    not representing or imitating external reality
    Even his family seemed to interest him in an abstract way, like lab specimens he’d come to feel responsibility and affection for.
  25. riveting
    capable of arousing and holding the attention
    What have I ever said that’s so riveting to anyone but myself?
    As a character, Daisy questions her ability to hold the attention of another, yet as a narrator looking back and retelling events in her life, she has to believe that she has something riveting to say.
  26. exigency
    a pressing or urgent situation
    Today there was a knock on the door and it turned out to be two bored-looking men From the Council coming to register us and Determine our Medical and Nutritional Exigencies which turned out to mean did any of us have appendicitis or scurvy?
  27. premises
    land and the buildings on it
    After finding Aunt Penn on the list and putting a bunch of x’s and a question mark by her name and asking a few official-type questions, they asked to speak to our guardian and seemed fairly taken aback to discover that the closest we had to a grown-up on the premises was Osbert.
  28. embargo
    a government order imposing a trade barrier
    Then they both looked at me with the evil eye I seem to get from just about everyone these days and asked if we had enough money for food, and Osbert explained that we had some money in his mother’s account and the men said, We’ll do what we can for you, and added that it wasn’t definite but rationing would probably start any day now due to the embargoes, and school was closing early for summer holidays and we should stay off the roads.
  29. radical
    markedly new or introducing extreme change
    Well it was reassuring to know that local government was taking an interest, but their visit didn’t exactly cause any radical changes to our lifestyle since for the last few days we’d mostly been hanging around wondering what to do next, broken up by trips to town where we had to wait in line for hours listening to people’s gossip about what was Really Going On.
  30. anarchy
    a state of lawlessness and disorder
    People who had friends or friends of friends who had managed to get phone calls or e-mails through said that London Was Occupied and there were tanks and soldiers in the streets and fire and anarchy all around.
  31. malign
    evil or harmful in nature or influence
    One crazy old man kept whispering to anyone who would listen that the BBC had been taken over by Malign Forces and that we shouldn’t believe anything we heard on The Wireless but his wife rolled her eyes and said he was still worried about the Germans from last time around.
  32. paranoia
    a mental disorder characterized by delusions of persecution
    I saw expressions on people’s faces that I’d never seen before, something like anxiety and superiority and paranoia all mixed up in one polite grimace.
  33. spasm
    a painful and involuntary muscular contraction
    Here’s the sort of thing we’d hear, all in low hushed tones especially when us Children were around, and if it doesn’t sound so bad to you try playing it on an endless loop while you listen and smile politely until your cheeks go into spasm and you develop a twitch:
  34. thrall
    the state of being under the control of another person
    Now let’s try to understand that falling into sexual and emotional thrall with an underage blood relative hadn’t exactly been on my list of Things to Do while visiting England, but I was coming around to the belief that whether you liked it or not, Things Happen and once they start happening you pretty much just have to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop.
  35. inappropriate
    not in keeping with what is correct or proper
    You could tell Piper missed her mother and there were things I still wanted to ask her but aside from that her arrival right now in the middle of the world’s most inappropriate case of sexual obsession would have been inconvenient to say the least.
Created on Wed Oct 23 16:04:02 EDT 2013 (updated Tue Aug 07 15:02:56 EDT 2018)

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