Picture Me Gone
Written by Meg Rosoff
Narrated by Suzy Jackson
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Meg Rosoff
Meg Rosoff is a hugely versatile novelist for children and adults and has won the Branford Boase Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Printz Award. Her post-apocalyptic How I Live Now was made into a major motion picture starring Saoirse Ronan and Picture Me Gone was shortlisted for the National Book Award in the USA. Originally from Massachusetts, Meg now lives in London.
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Reviews for Picture Me Gone
102 ratings14 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5***Disclaimer: I won this as a Goodreads First Reads winner. This did not shape my opinion in any way.***
This book just wasn't for me. I couldn't get into it, and I didn't feel any connection to almost any of the characters. I think that one important aspect of a book, at least for myself, is understanding or at least liking the protagonist. But I just couldn't connect or feel almost anything for Mila.
Now, the books isn't terrible, but it just wasn't great, in my opinion. The plot felt very lacking and slow. The book was pretty anticlimactic. There was one plot twist that I enjoyed. That was when I think it really started to get better. I actually quite liked the ending, which is why this is 2/5.
Another aspect that bugged me was how there were no quotation marks around the dialog. I think that the main reason it bothered me was honestly because I had just finished reading The Road, and I just wanted to read a "normal" book again.
All in all, I think that part of this was a it's me not you type of book, but I just really couldn't get into the book at all. I pushed myself through it but not because I really enjoyed the book. I liked that it made me think at the end, but it was just very lacking in general. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Realistic fiction (main character is a teen, but is not your typical, fast-paced teen book). Aside from the awful cover (which turns out to refer to the emptiness felt within a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house, rather than a girl who runs away from home and disappears into a Mondrian painting), the story is sparse and slow--more about the observation of silences and absences than about things happening or actions being done. If one is patient and interested enough to stick it out, it's supposedly very interesting to discover Mila's unique perspective on the differences among the families, but this is definitely not one I'd recommend to a general teen audience.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mila has some abilities to sense people's moods and reading a room. She and her dad, Gil, embark on a trip to the United States from London to visit Matthew, Gil's best friend from childhood. The day before their departure, they get a call from Suzanne that Matthew has gone missing, apparently walking out of his life. The two decided to take the trip anyway and spend their time in America trying to find Matthew and put together the pieces of his life. An interesting read. I don't know the appeal it will have for middle school students. But it kept surprising me with revelations and some really heavy stuff that the adults in the book were dealing with, not always very well.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This definitely made me eager to check out Rosoff's other work, particularly How I Live Now. It was a tense sort of mystery story with a well-drawn (if almost too precocious) narrator trying to make sense of the ineffable world of adulthood.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Liked the voice of the narrator, but found the story dragged and didn't have enough oomph in the climax to satisfy me. The big betrayal mentioned on the back jacket blurb wasn't as shocking as I'd anticipated and overall the book just left me with nothing memorable except the fresh description provided by Mila.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/512 year old Mia finds herself trying to solve the mystery of a missing person when she and her father, Gil, fly from London to visit Matthew, her father's friend from the past who lives in New York. They find he has just disappeared, seemingly unharmed, leaving his wife Suzanne and baby alone. While Gil is kind of the absent-minded professor type, Mia is his rock taking note of everything with an understanding deeper than her 12 years. Rosoff's writing is intriguing, bringing in many details throughout the novel to help solve the mystery of the missing man. The more details she learns though, the more confusing it is for Mia to determine just what is going on. She grows up a lot as she finds out there is a lot more to adulthood than she previously thought. Recommended for girls in grades 8 & up.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My VOYA: 3Q 3PMila and her father travel from London to New York in search of her father’s best friend, who has gone missing. Although well-written, I never quite entered into this story. Having read other works by Rosoff, Picture Me Gone never captivated me in the way something like How I Live Now did. It was still interesting and the characters were strong, but not the storyline did not keep me reading.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Likes: Meg Rosoff has a unique writing style for YA. Mila is a smart and perceptive heroine. I loved the family dynamic between Mila and her mom and dad. Great descriptions. A quick read. It's a coming of age story in which coming of age means realizing that the world sucks and your parents lie. Also, road trip!Dislikes: Some aspects of the writing style I did not appreciate, such as the lack of quotation marks to enclose dialogue. This is also a depressing book with an ambivalent ending. See "world sucks" above. Also, it's a mystery, but not a very mysterious one.Readalikes: If someone likes this, I'd definitely recommend Rosoff's other books, the best of which is How I Live Now.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very unique character in a unique situation. It is a quick read and I was thoroughly engaged throughout.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Smart & sassy narrator in an interesting situation. A quick & enjoyable read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a story told from the point-of-view of twelve-year-old Mila, who travels with her father Gil from London to New York State during Easter break to visit his oldest friend Matthew. Mila’s mother, Marieka, cannot go as she has a violin concert that week.Just before Mila and Gil depart, they learn from Matthew’s wife Suzanne that Matthew has gone missing. They decide to go anyway and help find out what happened to him. Mila is convinced she will be of great assistance, since she is very good at reading people and their subtexts just from observing their look, stance, tone, sensing their emotions, and so on. For this reason, she finds it appropriate that she has the same name as her grandfather’s dog, because she judges her skills as similar to those of a terrier. She is careful to clarify that it’s not because she’s “some sort of mystic”:"Most people don’t pay attention. They barge into a situation and start asking questions when the answers are already there. ... I just see a constellation of tiny facts too small for other people to notice. I don’t specifically register each element of the constellation but the overall impression will be clear. The Bear. The Hunter. The Swan.”[I think this theme would have been better served if Rosoff had not had Mila observe once that a waitress was pregnant, even though she herself did not yet know it.]The loving relationship that characterizes Mila’s family of three is contrasted with the families of Mila’s best friend Catlin, and of Matthew, Suzanne, and their new baby Gabriel. Although at only age twelve, Mila doesn’t understand everything, she seems to be more perceptive than any of the adults. But sometimes, it’s a bit disconcerting:"Lynda keeps talking like there’s nothing at all weird about a sometimes lesbian, who may or may not be the mother of Gil’s best friend’s secret teenage son, flirting with my father. I feel dizzy.”“Tell me,” she asks, “is there some huge adult conspiracy where people lead unimaginably complex lives and pretend it’s normal?”The messiness of the adult world makes Mila appreciate the pristine beauty of a snowstorm even more:"We’ve left the town and are driving through a hilly landscape that’s white as far as the eye can see. Fences and stone walls have become soft slopes, and farmhouses wear high slouchy hats. Everything looks clean and new and I like this world of perfection despite knowing that all sorts of barbed wire and dead things lie beneath.”Sometimes it makes her angry: “I am a child,” she wants to shout to her father: “Protect me.”In the end, she settles on the knowledge that the world is “imperfect, dangerous, peppered with betrayals and also with love.” And she dreams of a future that, unlike the present, she knows nothing about.Evaluation: I thought this book was very good, but I didn’t love it as much as others. Nevertheless, I’m very happy I read it, and want to read more of this author’s work. She has won a number of awards, is quite well-regarded, and offers, in this story, an often lovely rumination on the powerlessness as well as the perceptiveness of childhood.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finalist for the Youth National Book Award. Magnificent story of a 12 year old from London , traveling in upstate NY with her father. Dad is intending to see an old friend from his youth. Not all is as it appears and the trip exposes both father and daughter to reexamining their relationships with others and with themselves. Beautifully written with such perfectly tuned emotions. Because I know upstate NY in snow and storms, I loved the descriptions. They rekindled all my memories. Middle school read for an advanced reader.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Author Meg Rosoff has written an adventure that kept me up until I finished the book at 2 A.M. Being able to read a room myself, I was fascinated by Mila's ability to do the same and to use this talent to help her father find his missing friend, Matthew. When Matthew went missing, Mila and her dad go to N.Y. from London to try to collect information as to where he may be and why he disappeared. Mila see things that others don't and pieces together the mystery of the disappearance. Betrayal enters the picture and the author did a great job in keeping this issue until the very end of the book. Trust in the one person she trusted is shattered.To find out the shocking ending, buy and enjoy this great book by Ms. Rosoff.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm not even sure how to rate or review this book. The plot is a plot in the most basic sense but the main character's voice is so strong and so different that I didn't mind when she was describing the most mundane of things. I will be interested to see how readers react to this title because it's not an easy book to explain but is a quick, enjoyable read. Also, although coded YA in galley form, the main character seems young for YA but the situations are too old for MG so, another question mark.