What I Was

Set in the 1960s at an English boarding school, this novel chronicles an unlikely friendship between two boys and a scandal that shatters the idyll that has shielded and nurtured their relationship.

A piercing, magical story about?a life-altering friendship
Toward the end of his life, H looks back on the relationship that has shaped and obsessed him for nearly a century. It began many years earlier at St. Oswald's, a dismal boarding school on the coast of England, where the young H came face- to-face with an almost unbearably beautiful boy living by himself at the edge of the sea.
At first, the mysterious Finn appears to have no past-his home is an ancient fisherman's hut with a woodstove, a case of books, striped blankets, and a cat.
H insinuates his way into Finn's life, stalking him with perfect patience until an unlikely friendship is kindled; a confused idyll of ?devotion and longing set against a background of blazing wood fires and fishing expeditions.
Their friendship deepens, offering H both the freedom and the human connection that has always eluded him. But in a world of conformity, can one eccentric idyll be ?allowed to survive?