SO many things I liked very very much about this book and thus the pain.

He says, “conversayshun” because he can’t read or spell for that matter.

Though I too found the Todd-spelling affectation distracting and annoying, I figured it was there to underline that he didn’t know how to read. Doesn’t make too much sense because there’s never any textual event showing them recording their stories, though.

I loved that there were gay characters (only pairs of men, though?), but I can’t fully agree with your congratulations about “portraying a gay couple without making a big thing of it”. I’m a big homo myself and I wasn’t even sure until the third book that it wasn’t just my eager reading. There needed to be two male parents for the good dad/bad dad-ish interplay post-women death.

It seemed understated almost to the point of invisibility, perhaps to avoid raising the ire of conservatives?

The reveal of 1017’s partner being male was another weirdness. I’m attuned to the pronoun game so I definitely noticed that it wasn’t mentioned. Maybe delaying the reveal was a way to challenge the heteronormativity of readers? Maybe people assumed female and would be surprised.

Queer visibility in writing is a funny catch-22: explicitly naming it can be awkward, forced, and othering but blending it can make it invisible.

I could write so much more, maybe I’ll have to write about it elsewhere!

Thanks for your post, regardless, and I’m going to check out The Book Thief some time.

I agree, the accent is a little jarring. But I loved everything else so much that I just.. had to accept it and only gush about the book 🙂

There is a link to a letter from Patrick Ness, which is a prologue story which gives some background for Viola. That is on the FaceBook discussion group.

An American living in Britain? That’s even worse! If he would only live here I would get his books first. (I am greedy.) 😛

I am so very excited about the third book. Can’t come out soon enough for me.