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What I Did
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Review
'Gripping, hilarious and tender, this is, without doubt, one of the books of the year' (Daily Mail )
'The novel brilliantly captures parent-child relations in the raw and the emotions that even the most experienced social worker can't tame' (Independent )
'An amusing and unsettling story' (Saturday Guardian )
'[A] fine, challenging novel' (Mail on Sunday )
'The novel brilliantly captures parent-child relations in the raw and the emotions that even the most experienced social worker can't tame' (Independent )
'An amusing and unsettling story' (Saturday Guardian )
This is family life at its most believable: warm and messy, bored and raging. WHAT I DID is every parent's nightmare, but will make you burst out laughing too. I loved it.
(Emma Donoghue, author of ROOM )I loved it! Staggeringly good. Terrifyingly good
(Lisa Jewell )Hugely impressive, gripping, funny and thought provoking
(Emily Barr )Excellent . . . Dark but uplifting
(Alex Preston )'[A] fine, challenging novel' (Mail on Sunday )
Product Description
A boy runs across a busy road.
His father smacks him.
A passer-by intervenes ...
When Billy Wright runs across a busy road, his world is altered irreversibly, even though he doesn't realise it at the time.
Because a passer-by has stopped to watch the scene. She has seen Billy's father catch up with him and smack him. Within an hour she has informed social services, plunging the family into a living nightmare which begins with a social worker's visit and escalates through a series of misunderstandings until the family is threatened to its core.
What I Did is a powerful novel about the unseen consequences of a split second decision, about a childhood interrupted and the lengths we go to to protect the ones we love. It is frequently heartbreaking, blackly funny, and utterly compelling.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Yet another five star review from me and I begin to wonder if I am becoming less critical in my "old" age! However this book absolutely deserves it in my view. The subject matter is serious but is handled in a very original way that makes it very readable, without detracting from the importance of the issues. Many ordinary, "good" parents will shiver at the possibility that this could happen to them - and we know that it sometimes does. Balance that against the far more frequent stories in the news of child abuse and we have the classic dilemma that social workers face every day of their working lives: damned if they do and damned if they don't. Many innocent parents will empathise with the reaction of Billy's father to the accusations against him and will recoil from the invasion of privacy and family life that results from a momentary action. So, that's the theme, but the beauty of this book is in the narration by six year old Billy, who is a bright child with an almost obsessive interest in natural history - which contributes in part to the misinterpretation of his father's actions. You will laugh out loud at some of Billy's "mis-sayings" - it took me most of the book to unravel his use of the word vertically - turned out to mean virtually. (We all have stories like this from our children. My son wanted to play a gitower with a stick (violin)and sit in a death (deck) chair. And I narrowly avoided social services when I gave him chicken maggots for tea.) It is Billy's efforts to do the right thing and to do what he thinks his parents want him to that leads them further and further into the nightmare and only by using Billy as the narrator could the author explain this through Billy's eyes. If you liked Room by Emma Donoghue you will like this device; if you didn't, then this might irritate you. For me it was a compelling read.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
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As soon as I started this book I was hooked, surprising as I don't usually like books written through the eyes of a child. This story uses this device very well, Billy is a bright six year old with a little boy's fascination with natural history. On the day the story starts, one half-term, he wakes his father too early, takes too long putting his shoes on, spills coffee on his father plus a multitude of other minor sins then, when he realises how cross his father is runs away towards the road and his father smacks him. A passer-by intervenes and this culminates in a visit from a social worker.
The story from this point on escalates, Billy tells the truth as he sees it, his Dad is annoyed at the interference and Billy's mother doesn't know what to think. The love between Billy and his Dad shines off the page, but life in this household is pressured before this incident and the investigation doesn't improve matters.
Billy's story is told in a mixture of his own words, cow sill for council, and natural history facts. Billy's conversations both with other people and to himself frequently go off at a tangent and having had a son this reminded me of some of those seemingly endless conversations. Despite being written from a child's perspective the story keeps up a good pace and I rattled through it.
This book reminds us all that sometimes doing or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can have a huge impact on so many lives.
The story from this point on escalates, Billy tells the truth as he sees it, his Dad is annoyed at the interference and Billy's mother doesn't know what to think. The love between Billy and his Dad shines off the page, but life in this household is pressured before this incident and the investigation doesn't improve matters.
Billy's story is told in a mixture of his own words, cow sill for council, and natural history facts. Billy's conversations both with other people and to himself frequently go off at a tangent and having had a son this reminded me of some of those seemingly endless conversations. Despite being written from a child's perspective the story keeps up a good pace and I rattled through it.
This book reminds us all that sometimes doing or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can have a huge impact on so many lives.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The blurb on the back of What I Did by Christopher Wakling intrigued me so much that I just had to pick this one from the Amazon Vine programme. I've had my nose firmly stuck between the pages for the past couple of days - this really is a wonderfully clever book.
The central storyline of What I Did could happen to any family. Imagine, you are out in the park with your six year old son. Both of you are in a bad mood - it's early, you have work worries, you'd rather be in bed. Suddenly your son runs off, over the park, through the trees and makes his way towards a busy road. You chase him, shouting for him to stop. You see him run out between parked cars, you see the traffic, your heart thuds. He's lucky, he stops, he's unhurt. You grab him - you smack him. You are so relieved that he is OK, but so damn angry too.
And so, that is the beginning of the story. Narrated by six year old Billy, and seen purely through his eyes, with his kind of mixed up feelings about his angry Dad and his pure innocence and honestly, that only cause the family more and more heartache.
Billy is a wonderfully drawn character, bright as a button, intelligent, obsessed with David Attenborough and wild animals and the attention span of an ant. At first his voice is a little difficult to relate to, he often muddles his words and at times he goes totally off-track, into random observations and information relaying. This only adds to his character, and makes him more lifelike. Six year old boys are like that, this is real life.
Somebody saw Jim (Billy's Dad) smack him, she confronted him and Jim told her where to get off - that was his second mistake, after the mistake of smacking Billy. Soon the family are visited by Social Workers and so begins a round of examinations, case conferences, meetings and accusations.
Throughout all of this, Billy's voice is loud. He answers the questions in his honest way - but it is the adults who get things wrong, they interpret his answers to mean different things, and Billy, in his innocence does not realise this.
Jim loves Billy, there is no doubt of that. Jim is also stubborn, short tempered and at times very angry. He swears, works too hard and drinks beer. He will not co-operate with the agencies involved, he makes things worse - for himself and for Billy.
This is a clever, entertaining, sad, funny and heart warming story. It is about real life, about mistakes that are made and about the innocence of childhood. I loved every page!
The central storyline of What I Did could happen to any family. Imagine, you are out in the park with your six year old son. Both of you are in a bad mood - it's early, you have work worries, you'd rather be in bed. Suddenly your son runs off, over the park, through the trees and makes his way towards a busy road. You chase him, shouting for him to stop. You see him run out between parked cars, you see the traffic, your heart thuds. He's lucky, he stops, he's unhurt. You grab him - you smack him. You are so relieved that he is OK, but so damn angry too.
And so, that is the beginning of the story. Narrated by six year old Billy, and seen purely through his eyes, with his kind of mixed up feelings about his angry Dad and his pure innocence and honestly, that only cause the family more and more heartache.
Billy is a wonderfully drawn character, bright as a button, intelligent, obsessed with David Attenborough and wild animals and the attention span of an ant. At first his voice is a little difficult to relate to, he often muddles his words and at times he goes totally off-track, into random observations and information relaying. This only adds to his character, and makes him more lifelike. Six year old boys are like that, this is real life.
Somebody saw Jim (Billy's Dad) smack him, she confronted him and Jim told her where to get off - that was his second mistake, after the mistake of smacking Billy. Soon the family are visited by Social Workers and so begins a round of examinations, case conferences, meetings and accusations.
Throughout all of this, Billy's voice is loud. He answers the questions in his honest way - but it is the adults who get things wrong, they interpret his answers to mean different things, and Billy, in his innocence does not realise this.
Jim loves Billy, there is no doubt of that. Jim is also stubborn, short tempered and at times very angry. He swears, works too hard and drinks beer. He will not co-operate with the agencies involved, he makes things worse - for himself and for Billy.
This is a clever, entertaining, sad, funny and heart warming story. It is about real life, about mistakes that are made and about the innocence of childhood. I loved every page!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
lovely book
Very moving and enjoyable read, skilfully written. Amusingly told from the point of view of a child, with a page turning ending.
Published 3 days ago by M Twain
A well-crafted, original novel
It took me a while to get used to the narrator's voice in this novel written from a child's point of view, but once I had got to know that voice, it became the making of the book. Read more
Published 1 month ago by A. Hunt
A slightly irritating child narrator, but a good idea for a story.
Billy Wright is six years old and spends a lot of time with his dad, whilst his mum is out at work. One day, whilst out for a walk, Billy nearly runs into the road and his dad... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Nicola
What I Did
This was a great read I couldn't put it down.funny in parts and gripping in others, just shows how things can spiral out of control.
Published 3 months ago by Dotty
Thought provoking, darkly funny but also upsetting
A great book that will resonate I am sure with any parent who has disciplined a child, or maybe seen a child disciplined, and then thought what does this look like to an... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mr. Philip Harkins
Inside the mind of a six year old
This is a v good book, both unsettling and laugh out loud funny in parts. The real horror of this situation is that the child has no concept of the damage he is causing to himself... Read more
Published 3 months ago by L Sheehy
Good read and great ending
I really enjoyed 'What I Did', the story of a six-year-old boy who gets smacked by his father for running off and almost getting knocked over. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Ms. T. A. Gilbert
I just couldn't get into it
The story is told through the voice of a small boy and follows the turn of events that leads to a father under suspicion of abuse. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Fi P
Listening is good, but mind reading would be SO much better!
Billy and his dad are out in the park, and because the story is told from Billy's perspective it made me smile a few times. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Helen Simpson
Living a nightmare
A small incident which many of us could be guilty of, which escalated into a horrendous situation - the thought of having to undergo these events for something that used to be an... Read more
Published 7 months ago by bookworm8
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