How I Live Now

Piper is Daisy’s youngest cousin, and she also serves as a foil to the protagonist. At nine years old, Piper is “good and pure” (47), and she is portrayed as a counterpoint to Daisy’s teenage angst and mental health condition. When the war begins and food is rationed, Piper becomes “incredibly good at making things with the dried beans and rice and bacon” (54) that make up the family’s food supplies. Piper takes care of her family, even at her young age. She is also very loving toward Daisy, who is surprised by the girl’s habit of holding her hand. Piper also cares deeply for the far animals and trains them well.

When Piper and Daisy are forced to live with the McEvoy family, Daisy tries to shield Piper from the war’s more difficult realities. Daisy believes that Piper’s “job [is] to be a Mystical Creature” (77), while her own job is to find Edmond and Isaac. During Daisy and Piper’s cross-country journey, Piper remains unusually calm and collected, never complaining. She identifies edible foods and helps to ensure the journey’s success. However, Piper hates harming animals, so it falls to Daisy to kill the fish that Piper catches. Ultimately, Piper’s love helps Daisy to overcome her disordered eating and become a more responsible individual.

When Daisy returns to England six years after the war, Piper has grown and matured, becoming “a graceful young woman with a heavy curtain of dark hair and the most perfect pale skin” (174). In addition to Piper’s platonic love for her family, Piper begins a romantic relationship with Jonathan, who is studying to be a doctor. Piper also wants to be a doctor and is working on her application when she is reunited with Daisy.

Edmond is central to Daisy’s life in This Is How I Live Now. Her story is about how “everything changed because of Edmond” (1). He is Daisy’s cousin and has grey eyes with a “quizzical wise-dog gaze” (90). At 14 years old, he smokes cigarettes and drives, deeply impressing Daisy. She thinks, “If this kid turns out to be thirty-five I won’t be a bit surprised” (16). He is more responsible and emotionally stable than Daisy at the beginning of the novel, and he also has the ability to read minds. These qualities cause Daisy to fall in love with Edmond, and they initiate an incestuous relationship. However, Daisy argues that Edmond “was not corruptible. Some people are just like that and if you don’t believe me it just means you’ve never met one of them yourself. Which is your loss” (49). Her defensive tone reflects her belief that Edmond is beyond all social norms.

After Edmond and Daisy are separated, Edmond remains in psychic contact with her, comforting her and helping her to combat loneliness from a distance. This connection lasts until he is forced to watch the massacre of the people he lives and works with at Gateshead Farm. Although Edmond foresaw the tragedy and tried to prevent it, no one other Isaac took his psychic powers seriously. The trauma of the massacre causes Edmond to stop believing in his supernatural powers and in Daisy’s love. He then becomes even thinner than Daisy and begins to self-harm. When the two are finally reunited, Daisy notices that Edmond’s “arms were covered in scars […] the same thin lines etched around his neck” (180). He is unable to act out and harm other people, so he turns his rage on himself.

When she first returns to England, Edmond is unkind to Daisy; his eyes are “hard and angry and unyielding” (181). He blames her for departure to the US. The only thing that helps him recover from his trauma is gardening. Daisy becomes a gardener as well in order to be near him and to regain his trust and love.

Isaac is Edmond’s twin, but he has green eyes instead of grey. Isaac is the quietest of the cousins; he “could go days without saying a single word” (22). Daisy is frequently surprised when Isaac does speak. He is “more animal than human” (36) and is very good at communicating with animals and taking care of them. He spends more time with Piper, Daisy, and Edmond than with Osbert.

Isaac lives and works at Gateshead Farm with Edmond, and when they both have the psychic premonition about the massacre, Isaac leaves. He is able to convince Edmond to escape with him for a short while, but Edmond returns to try and save the others at the farm. Isaac, meanwhile, walks home and hides in the village, reaching the house mere days after Daisy leaves. In the post-war world, people appreciate Isaac’s skills with animals; he becomes a respected “Witch Doctor” (177) for animals. Overall, Isaac “survived because he listened to animals” (193). His interspecies bonds and his sense of self-preservation keep him from becoming as traumatized as Edmond does. Serving as a foil to Edmond, Isaac is immediately happy to see Daisy when she returns.

Osbert is 16 years old, which makes him the oldest of Daisy’s cousins. Daisy describes Osbert as “the one with Family Responsibilities which Frankly Exhausted Him and He’d Rather Not Be Bothered only Seeing As How He Was the Eldest” (36). He takes charge when adults visit the children, and in the first few chapters, he spends less time with his siblings, and Daisy because he alone attends to a school outside the home. Osbert and his school friends want to be spies, and they meet secretly during the supposed quarantine. Eventually, Osbert gets a job with the army and condones the army’s decision to separate Isaac and Edmond from Daisy and Piper. After his family learns that Aunt Penn died during the war, and after they all return home, Osbert adopts his siblings. At the end of the novel, he lives with his unnamed girlfriend but visits home frequently.

Aunt Penn is the last person in her immediate family to meet Daisy. This is because Aunt Penn “always has Important Work To Do Related to the Peace Process” (8). She is a hardworking individual who is trying to prevent the war from happening. When she finally gets a chance to talk with Daisy, Aunt Penn describes Daisy’s mother, who died in childbirth. Aunt Penn assures Daisy that her mother was happy to be pregnant, and she acts as a maternal figure for Daisy.

About a week or so after Daisy arrives in England, Aunt Penn goes to Oslo to give a lecture on peace. When the occupation begins, she sends money to her children so that they can buy supplies. She is later killed when she tries to return home to her children. Daisy therefore draws morbid philosophical parallels between her mother and Aunt Penn, musing, “Poor sisters […] Both murdered by their children” (176). This wording reflects Daisy’s ongoing guilt over her perceived role in her own mother’s death.

Daisy’s father is not named in the novel. He is focused on his new wife, Davina, who is pregnant when Daisy leaves New York City. From Daisy’s perspective, her father sends her away to England because he struggles to help her with her disordered eating and other issues. When he finally manages to contact Daisy in the midst of the war, he forces her to return to New York City, then hospitalizes her for months. Eventually, he feels guilty about this and helps her to become one of the first people to return to England after the borders reopen (six years after Daisy returns to New York). She feels that with this gesture, he is “trying to make amends” (171) for his past.

Davina is Daisy’s stepmother. Daisy and her friends call her “Davina the Diabolical” (11) and refer to her unborn child as “Damian.” Daisy believes that Davina is trying to poison her, and this belief is the inciting incident for Daisy’s disordered eating. When Davina’s child is born, it is a girl whom Davina and her husband name Leonora. They clearly prefer this child to Daisy, who ultimately refuses to live with Davina and her new half-sister for more than a few days.

Leah is Daisy’s best friend in New York. She and Daisy go to school together before Daisy leaves the country. Leah writes letters to Daisy, keeping her up to date on the latest school gossip. Leah’s deceased father is a foil to Daisy’s mother, for Leah’s family constantly talks about her late father, while Daisy’s father refuses to talk about his late wife. Leah is a static, minor character.