Wow, Patrick Ness, color me super impressed. Way to create a distinctive, consistent, memorable voice for your protagonist. That isn’t easy. I have not read a book where I enjoyed the narrator’s voice so much since, mm, The Book Thief, and before that The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Which are two of my all-time favorite books.
The Knife of Never Letting Go is based on a fantastic premise, that the aliens in this settled world have given the settlers the disease of Noise, which killed all the women and left the men able to hear each other’s thoughts; and then the youngest boy in the settlement of Prentisstown finds a girl. A live girl! The book is fast-paced and exciting and frightening. The title is perfect. The relationship between Todd and Viola is utterly real – all the relationships are, actually, and even though this is a plot-driven book, damn, Patrick Ness, you just nail those emotional moments every single time. Like this? (Major spoilers in the block text below, so skip to the subsequent paragraph if you haven’t read the book. Even if you don’t care about spoilers – if you haven’t read the book, you won’t know how great this is because all the context isn’t there, but trust me, it is great.)
Ben nods again, slow and sad, and I notice now that he’s dirty and there’s blood clotted on his nose and he looks like he ain’t eaten for a week but it’s still Ben and he can still read me like no other cuz his Noise is already asking me bout Manchee and I’m already showing him and here at last my eyes properly fill and rush over and he takes me in his arms again and I cry for real over the loss of my dog and of Cillian and of the life that was.
“I left him,” I say and keep saying, snot-filled and coughing. “I left him.”
“I know,” he says and I can tell it’s true cuz I hear the same words in his Noise. I left him, he thinks.
Ouch. Also, chills.
And you know what else, Patrick Ness? Since I have gotten started talking about the good things about your book, and how it’s just everything that’s great about being great? What else is, hooray for you, portraying a gay couple without making a big thing of it – we know they’re a couple because they act like a couple, not because you (the author) gets all THESE ARE TWO GAY PEOPLE THAT ARE GAY; they are just a couple, and that is nice, and it is normalizing, and there should be more of that going on in literature. Oo, and, okay, also? Aaron was about the dreadfullest villain I ever read about in my life. (That isn’t a spoiler – you can always tell he’s insane.)
Here’s the thing, Patrick Ness. You already did it! You already created Todd’s voice! You did it using only your words! Your achievement is a remarkable achievement, because it is damn hard to create a voice like that, and you did it ever so beautifully. Why, why, why did you need to do that silly dialect thing? “Yer” is not necessary! “Cuz” is not really necessary either! And I can assure you that there is no possible world in which “conversayshun” would ever be necessary, because that is how the word is already pronounced. It’s not an accent. It’s how you say the word. And “an asking” instead of “a question” is both silly and jarring. It mildly chagrins my dazzle to see you relying on dialecty crutches this way, when Todd’s voice, and the atmosphere of the world you’ve created, are already just about perfect.
Since I am having a moan anyway, here’s my other (teeny-tiny) gripe, which contains massive spoilers. I feel like the Big Prentisstown Reveal could have happened sooner. At least part of it could have happened sooner. I say, tell about how they killed all the women earlier on in the book (have one of the townspeople tell Todd, or something) – we pretty much figure that out anyway, right? It’s part of the emotional arc of the story, but it’s not the central part. The reveal you want to save for close to the end is that Prentisstown keeps on killing their own, to allow the boys to become men. That is what’s crucial to the events that occur immediately after Ben tells it to Todd – plotwise and emotional-story-arc-wise. Plus, if we already had the reveal about the women, we would think, okay, we’re done, now we know why nobody likes Prentisstown, and then the other thing would really slap us in the face, because it is pretty chilling.
(I mean, it wouldn’t slap me in the face. I would already know because I would have read the end (as indeed I did!) and found out what was what. This was helpful to me in making judgments about where each reveal should have occurred. Reading the end: the Way, the Truth, and the Light, verily I say unto ye.)
Once I get started complaining, I can’t stop, so here’s my last complaint. Patrick Ness, WHY ARE YOU BRITISH? And also WHY DID I NOT READ THIS BOOK SOONER? My sister has just now returned from Ireland, and if I had read this book like, like two days sooner, I could have told her to buy me the sequel, which is out in the UK now but not out in the US until September. I really loved the books I read last week, but I would have loved them a few days later, and then I could have had The Ask and the Answer on Thursday when my sister comes all the way properly home.
To conclude, Patrick Ness, you are awesome, and future books would not suffer if you eighty-sixed the fakey dialect bit. Also (spoilers! Spoilers!), given that this book turned me into an emotional wreck, you, um, you could go ahead and have it turn out that Ben is still alive. And, um, I mean, Cillian too. That would be fine. It wouldn’t mess up anything! I would be happy! Todd and Ben would be happy! We would all be happy! I wouldn’t feel like you had cheated! Just if you wanted to have it turn out that way. I only mention it.
Kisses and hugs,
Jenny
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Bart’s Bookshelf
books i done read
Becky’s Book Reviews
Confessions of a Bibliovore
Fantasy Book Critic
Librarilly Blonde
The Well-Read Child
Wands and Worlds
YA Reads
YA Fabulous
Karin’s Book Nook
The Page Flipper
Reading the Leaves
Bookannelid
Lisa the Nerd
Kids Lit
Bitten by Books
Books and So Many More Books
A Hoyden’s Look at Literature
Let me know if I missed yours!