What I Did - by Christopher Wakling (Paperback)

About the Book

"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."

Book Synopsis

"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."

From the Back Cover

"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.

Review Quotes

"Warm, hilarious, eye-wateringly moving, with the cleverest use of point of view since Jane Austen . . . WHAT I DID is the novel that should have won the Booker prize." - Daily Mail (London), "Christmas Pick" in the literary fiction category
"Much in the vein of Atonement, a well-intentioned innocent threatens to destroy the people he loves most . . . affecting." - Publishers Weekly
"Like Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap, [WHAT I DID] documents one family's attempt to cope with the aftermath of a public outburst and the failure of their own innocent attempts to put things right . . . an affecting, thought-provoking tale of parent-child relations." - Booklist
"Horribly plausible . . . [What I Did] brilliantly captures parent-child relations in the raw." - The Independent
"Wakling creates believable conflict from the everyday facts of a child going just too far and a parent losing it . . . The novel is a strong depiction of a family in crisis." - Sunday Age (Melbourne)
"A powerful parable of 21st century society . . . a fine, challenging novel." - Mail on Sunday
"I loved it! Staggeringly good. Terrifyingly good." - Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of Ralph's Party
"Hugely impressive, gripping, funny and thought provoking." - Emily Barr, bestselling author of Backpack
"Excellent . . . Dark but uplifting." - Alex Preston, author of This Bleeding City
"A powerful, poignant and funny novel, perched on the precarious line between protecting children and destroying families." - Melbourne Age
"A child's view of the actions and attitudes of adults has seldom been so compellingly or tenaciously illustrated as by Wakling in this perfect little book." - Irish Times
"This is family life today at its most believable: warm and messy, bored and raging, and above all, self-conscious. WHAT I DID is every parent's nightmare, but will make you burst out laughing too. I loved it." - Emma Donoghue
"Gripping, hilarious, tender and a whole lot more, this is, without doubt, one of the books of the year." - Daily Mail (London)
"Amusing and unsettling . . . What I Did lets us into the mind of a child who is comically literal and utterly at sea in the world of adults." - The Guardian