What I Did: A Novel
&#8220;Much in the vein of Atonement, a well-intentioned innocent threatens to destroy the people he loves most . . . affecting.&#8221; (Publishers Weekly)&#8220;Like Christos Tsiolkas&#8217; The Slap, [WHAT I DID] documents one family&#8217;s attempt to copewith 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.&#8221; (Booklist)&#8220;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.&#8221; (Daily Mail (London), "Christmas Pick" in the literary fiction category)&#8220;A child&#8217;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.&#8221; (Irish Times)&#8220;Gripping, hilarious, tender and a whole lot more, this is, without doubt, one of the books of the year.&#8221; (Daily Mail (London))&#8220;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&#8217;s nightmare, but will make you burst out laughing too. I loved it.&#8221; (Emma Donoghue)&#8220;A powerful, poignant and funny novel, perched on the precarious line between protecting children and destroying families.&#8221; (Melbourne Age)&#8220;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.&#8221; (The Guardian)&#8220;Horribly plausible . . . [What I Did] brilliantly captures parent-child relations in the raw.&#8221; (The Independent)&#8220;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.&#8221; (Sunday Age (Melbourne))&#8220;A powerful parable of 21st century society . . . a fine, challenging novel.&#8221; (Mail on Sunday)&#8220;I loved it! Staggeringly good. Terrifyingly good.&#8221; (Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of Ralph's Party)&#8220;Hugely impressive, gripping, funny and thought provoking.&#8221; (Emily Barr, bestselling author of Backpack)&#8220;Excellent . . . Dark but uplifting.&#8221; (Alex Preston, author of This Bleeding City)