A review of The Knife of Never Letting Go; The first in a series that changed the YA landscape and launched Patrick Ness as one of the most uniquely powerful writers of our time.
The population of god-fearing Prentisstown has been reduced to a mere 147 men (there are no women among them), but that’s not all that’s odd about the town. There’s no privacy here either, no silence, because everyone can hear the Noise of others’ thoughts. Everyone that is, except 12 year-old orphan Todd who, on the verge of the birthday that will see him become a man, discovers “a hole in the Noise” while walking by the dark swamp that teems with amphibians and reptiles. When Todd tells his guardians, they’re horrified. “We have got to get you outta here,” they panic and so Todd is sent back to the swamp, and told he “ain’t coming back”. Shortly after fleeing, he meets a girl in the marsh and they must flee the hunters who can hear their every thought.
Page-turningly tense and stridently intelligent, this is storytelling at it’s most inventive - a powerful, exhilarating exploration of ethics, identity, fear and love. Published ten years ago, this seminal novel thoroughly deserves to be read by new generations.
The complete Chaos Walking trilogy is now available in this striking boxed set.
Prentisstown isn't like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in a constant, overwhelming Noise. There is no privacy. There are no secrets. Then Todd Hewitt unexpectedly stumbles on a spot of complete silence. Which is impossible. And now he's going to have to run...
This boxed set includes paperback editions of The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men.
The story, narrated sparkily and saltily by its hero Todd, unpeels Prentisstown's dark secrets like the layers of a very rotten onion. Ness, an acclaimed author of adult fiction as well, moves things along at a breakneck pace, and Todd's world is filled with memorable characters, foul villains. - Financial Times
An impossibly good novel. It is at once endearing yet unsentimental; compassionate yet damning; exhaustingly exhilarating and yet tempered by a staid and considered emotivity. Written in the first-person present tense in an unapologetically impudent manner, this novel captures exceptionally the brash bravado and the underlying insecurities that actively teem inside the minds and explode in the actions of boys on their path to manhood. - www.inthenews.co.uk
There have been several excellent debuts in recent months and perhaps the most impressive is Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go. It's the story of Todd, the last boy in a community of men. In Prentisstown, the Noise virus has left men with the ability to hear each other's thoughts, those of animals too. The idea may send shivers up the spine, but how different is it to the constant intrusion of e-mails, texts, advertisements and CCTV we already suffer? When Todd finds a lone girl in the marshes he realises they have to escape, which isn't easy when your hunters can hear your every thought. Written in Todd's characteristic vernacular and brimming over with ideas about adolescence, faith and free will, this is intelligent, immersive storytelling -- Keith Gray -The Scotsman
A book like no other. It's one of the most gripping, fantastical reads around -- Camilla de la Bedoyere -Sunday Express
Darkly imagined and brilliantly created, the painful dystopian setting of a world full of noise in which all thoughts can be heard as if spoken is the background to this tense coming of age story. - The Guardian
Author
About Patrick Ness
Patrick Ness was born on an army base called Fort Belvoir, near Alexandria, Virginia, in the United States. His father was a drill sergeant in the US Army. He lived in Hawaii until he was almost six, spent the ten years after that in suburban Washington state, and then on to Los Angeles, where he studied English Literature at the University of Southern California.
His main job after graduating was as corporate writer at a cable company, writing manuals, form letters and speeches and once even an advertisement for the Gilroy, California Garlic Festival (this is true). If you're American and hated your cable company, he probably wrote you a letter of apology.
He got his first story published in Genre magazine in 1997 and was working on his first novel when he moved to London in 1999. He's lived here ever since. Sometimes he teaches creative writing but mostly he tries to write 1,000 words a day, 'come hell or high water'.
In May 2008, he published The Knife of Never Letting Go, his first book for young adults. It won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize and he hasn't looked back since.
Here is an interview with Patrick Ness where he talks about his new book The Rest of Us Just Live Here.
10 Things You Didn't Know About Patrick Ness
1. He has a tattoo of a rhinoceros. 2. He has run two marathons. 3. He is a certified scuba diver. 4. He wrote a radio comedy about vampires. 5. He has never been to New York City but... 6. He has been to Sydney, Auckland and Tokyo. 7. He got accepted into film school but turned it down to study writing. 8. He was a goth as a teenager (well, as much of a goth as you could be in Tacoma, Washington and still have to go to church every Sunday). 9. He is no longer a goth. 10. Under no circumstances will he eat onions.
