Nothing to do with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers - thank god.
Mother's Milk is part 4 of a set of books, known as Patrick Melrose series (the precursors to this being Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope) and is largely autobiographical in some respects (although, it is unclear what aspects are based on true life and those that are fiction.) Focusing on 4 summers in August, Mother's Milk follows the ups and downs of Melrose and his family from the viewpoints of several characters, jumping from Patrick, to his two young sons and also his wife.
I was surprised that I really enjoyed this book. Not having read any or heard of Edward St. Aubyn before (it was selected for our club from an outside source) it wasn't exactly what I expected, but the content actually exceeded my expectations, which is always a bonus when you go in half blind. Aubyn's style is incredibly witty - After the first 2 pages I was laughing and reading passages out to people. The character of Patrick Melrose is a slightly bitter, sarcastic, world-weary individual, who is attempting to be a better parent than his actual parents, but still seems to be suffering. his mother is painted in a rather unfavourable light (on her deathbed, losing her mind, content to bequeath her wealth to a cult), whilst Partrick becomes embroiled in an affair with an old school sweetheart so he can feel...well, something.
He's jealous of his wife and her relationship with his youngest son. Although he loves them, it appears he feels his children have taken his wife away as she no longer has the time to be intimate with Patrick, causing a rift. (slight Oedipus-tendencies at work, all created by Patrick overacting)
Patrick might come across as the villain of the piece (he's rather more a scallywag, and a rogue), but as someone pointed out, his wife is just as much to blame for not even addressing the situation - she fully admits to herself that she knows of his adultery but lets him carry on. It's unclear how miserable she feels about this however. It could be a simple matter of her letting Patrick 'get it out of his system' so to speak, which seems an odd and implausible attitude for someone who's supposed to be a loving relationship with him. Although, the reason for the affair stems from the fact they aren't really in a relationship - only by name.
On to more humourous matters, the characters of Thomas and Robert are fantastic. They have the comic timing and styles of the children from Outnumbered - not so much asking who would win in a fight between a polar bear and Jesus, but more the quick wit and eccentricities of Karen's character and the oddball moments of Ben's.
Although, the children's humour did seem quite advanced for their ages, which was a slight concern. I somehow doubt a four-year old could do such an accurate impression of their babysitter's eccentric mannerisms.
An enjoyable book, wonderful writing style and sharp wit. Be interesting to read the others in the series, although from what I read in the notes in the back of my copy, the eariler books focused on a much darker aspect of Melrose's life.
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher has a strange balance between quite accidental black humour and tragedy. The storyteller is 10 year old Jamie Matthews, who has moved to the Lake District with his father, his sister Jasmine and his cat Roger. Five years ago, Jasmine’s twin sister Rose, was killed in an explosion, orchestrated by terrorists. As such, the father has never quite come to terms with the loss of Rose and is split from their mother. Both grieving in their own ways, whilst Jamie struggles to fit in surrounded by bullies, unsympathetic teachers and neglect from his father. Luckily, his sister Jasmine stands by him, as does a Muslim girl, Sunya, causing the two to strike up a friendship.
Characters:
Jamie – the narrator, 10 years old, avid spider-man fan, a curious and slightly bewildered child who seems to lack the attention he needs from the deadbeat dad and the absent mum.
Jasmine – the hero of the story – looks after Jamie, pretty much runs the household due to the dad’s drinking and grief. Dyes her hair bright pink so as to be distinguished from her dead sister.
Dad – alcoholic, but never violent to his kids – just consumed by sorrow. Tries, but is essentially a nervous wreck. Hates Muslims, blaming all of them for the death of his daughter Rose.
Mum – worse than dad; absent for a good part of the story, not a sympathetic character or one to warm to really.
Sunya – a sweet and slightly mischievous Muslim girl who becomes friends with Jamie. One of the most interesting characters, thick-skinned and reliable; cares a lot for Jamie and shares similar characteristics of Jasmine.
Ross
For a a book with not the cheeriest of subject matters, (a broken family reeling from the events of a bombing that left one of their number dead) I actually found My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece a sweet, absorbing and often, an unintentionally funny read.I think it’s mainly due to the narrator being a 10 year old boy. If it had been from the point of view of the mother or the father than I imagine I would have put the book down after 10 pages and not gone back to it.
The jacket sleeve states that “this is his (Jamie’s) story, an unflinchingly real yet heart-warming account of a young boy’s struggle to make sense of the loss that tore his family apart.” – Now, alarm bells might ring, yes it does sound like one of those true story/grief books that I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot barge pole, but there’s something quite naïve and warm about Pitcher’s style and the fact it’s all detailed from this viewpoint of confused adolescence.
I should state, I got more laughs out of this book than I got out of the ‘uproariously funny’ Short History of Tractors In Ukrainian. Why? Because the writing was about a million times better, the humour – quite subtle and clever in the style of Outnumbered, e.g.
Mrs Farmer: “god is watching us all the time… even when we think we are alone, he can see what we are doing.”
Jamie (inner monologue): I thought about being on the toilet and hoped this wasn’t true.
Also:
Jamie (inner monologue):whilst on a trip to the beach in an attempt to scatter Rose’s ashes – We were squashed in the back. Rose had the front seat. Dad even put a seatbelt around the urn but forgot to tell me to do mine.
Sometimes childish:
During the creation of a nativity scene during an Ofsted inspection, baby Jesus, Joseph and Mary all have unexpected additions to their clay selves. One of the last lines in the chapter also ends with “thank you for giving baby Jesus a dickhead.”
I felt a lot of sympathy for Jamie. My impression in the story is that he never really knew his sister Rose as well as Jas and so to have her not in his life anymore, it didn’t affect him as much as it did the other members of the family. I feel he was very hard done by; constantly getting the shitty end of the stick on everything – whether this is a combination of his oddball quirks, the divide between his parents who seem so consumed in their own private grief that they fail to pay attention to others around them, or due to jerks like Daniel at school. I think if Jas hadn’t been there, the story would have been a lot darker – she was the ray of light for Jamie. She was the one he could turn to, she basically acted as more of mother to him than their actual mum, who’s presence in the book angered me when she finally appeared. Jas is the hero of the book; it’s her that cares for and looks after Jamie – the Christmas presents, the sacrifices and brave decisions she makes for him. Sunya fits a similar trope – she sees Jamie as the troubled, tortured outsider and tries to bond with him. Due to Jamie’s dad’s views on Muslims, Jamie feels like a traitor to his dead sister and his dad and at times, his behaviour towards Sunya is bizarre, rude and quite coarse. Her persistent and dogged attitude though, means she stands by him.
I feel in some ways, this books isn’t just about seeing grief from another view point – it’s also about friendship and the strains that friendship goes through in it’s initial creation and the things that do hold two people together and the obstacles they have to overcome in order for that friendship to work.
I’m trying not to throw too many spoilers in; basically, My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece is something I seriously recommend. The subject matter is handled expertly, with a thoughtful, often juvenile attitude shining through, lightening the mood of a book that some might expect to be darker. Is their a happy ending? There’s an ending, that’s all I’m going to say. However, Pitcher seems to have gone to the same school of making the character(s) suffer as Patrick Ness, but only attended the first few classes, as opposed to Ness and his degree in “ramping the pain to 11.” The bleaker moments, are outweighed by fitting conclusions and several significant turning points that bring certain characters (such as the dad) out of a one-dimensional shell and prove that they do have some spark and life in them. I think there is a lot of love in this book awaiting to be opened but is only freed through closure and the growing of everyone involved.
It would be interesting to see what a 10 year old thinks of this book.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is a book overloaded with genres and satirical wit. Part science fiction thriller, part war-journal, all tied up with elements of time travel and pre-determined events, it crams in a lot of information for something that is under 200 pages in length. It focuses on Billy Pilgrim, a soldier during World War 2, who appears to flit back and forth along his own time line experiencing himself before, after and during captivity by Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. A race of aliens, know as Tralfamadorians (who resemble upright toilet plungers with one green eye) abduct Billy and teach him about forth dimensions. Confused? It’s a bit of a mind-screw to say the least.
Ross:
I’m not sure if there was a part of me that didn’t ‘get’ this book – I think perhaps a ‘me’ in another dimension probably understood it and herald it as “the greatest thing since Halo Reach.” I got quite hung up on the time travel aspect, which I’m afraid is going to reveal my ignorance, as I viewed the book and Pilgrim’s jumping around not as something like a series of cuts in a tv show or film (which, after discussion - it perhaps was written as this, so it goes). I viewed or experienced Pilgrim's life as a progressive piece – he was ACTUALLY travelling in time from my perspective, begging the question – why didn’t anyone say “where the hell did you come from?” every time he popped into view. Then I came to understand – Pilgrim is perhaps everywhere – he is existing all the time on his own time line, everything that is happening to him is happening at the same time, including his death, even though he’s not really dead, because as the Tralfamadorians state, “at some point you are both dead and alive all the time” – Aliens, eh? Bunch of forth dimension wackjobs if you ask me.
There’s not much to say about Billy Pilgrim; a character that was fairly one-dimensional, who was for all intensive purposes, trapped to face inevitability. He was nothing more than a porter guiding the reader through his mind; one that was so fragmented and disjointed due to being unstuck in time. He showed little or almost no emotion; playing the part of someone struck dumb and seemed devoid of any real warmth and feeling. I felt myself not really caring for the character, which had no real life. In fact, I found I pitied him more than anything.
I admire Vonnegut’s style – his constant use of the arc words, “so it goes”, his inclusion of an author avatar in the form of Kilgore Trout (a man that has a militia of paper boys under his command because he’s too old and lazy to deliver them himself). The way he constantly mentioned the fate of Edgar Derby, laying it on so thick, you could have built a house with the amount it was referenced – and then Vonnegut has Derby shot in a throw-away sentence, leaving you wondering the point to such a build up but admiring the way such a character is so heavily referenced and then dispatched like someone crossing out an offending line of text.
Part of me wonders if the book is all about acceptance – it’s about resigning yourself to a fate that you know is going to happen, so why bother changing it. That’s the attitude the Tralfamadorians have – why bother, when you know you might as well make the most of what you’ve got and be happy. I suppose this is easy to say for something that resembles a toilet plunger on legs; I mean, life can't get any worse, right?
Moby Dick by Herman Melville, is considered one of the Great American Novels. Published in 1851, it tells the tale of a sailor named Ishmael and details his experiences onboard the whaling ship, the Pequod. Much of the main focus of the novel is on the fanatical, one-legged Captain Ahab, who is seeking revenge on Moby Dick, the sperm whale that destroyed his last boat and left him crippled. Apparently based on a true story of a whaling ship The Essex that was attacked by a sperm whale at sea.
Pete:
So, we just finished reading Moby Dick. Four of us made it to the end, which is pretty good going - it’s a famously hard book. Most people who pick it up don’t finish it, and most of the people who finish it are confused by it. It’s a classic novel, but it might not be a good book.
Funnily enough, there’s a book group in Bedford who are tackling Moby Dick as well. I know this because my Dad goes to an education centre for retired people in Bedford, and some of his friends are doing Melville’s tale of the whale in their book club. These are all old, smart people, and most of them sound like they are completely lost with the book. But it’s one of those books, right? The sort of book that you are supposed to read in book clubs.
Next up for our book club is Kurt Vonnegurt’sSlaughterhouse 5. I’m really looking forward to that. I haven’t read a lot of Vonnegurt, but I’ve read a few. There was a time in my life when I only read scifi, specifically scifi set in deep space, and when I ran out of those I started reading other things. One of those other things was a few Kurt Vonnegurt books, which I enjoyed.
A few years ago I was on a long train journey, and the woman sat next to me was reading Slaughterhouse 5.
“Oh wow, Kurt Vonnegurt!” I said to the not-unattractive woman, thinking she had some nerd credentials that I could bond with. “I really like his work.”
“I’m reading it for my book club,” she said, “and I’m really hating it.”
Oops.
After Slaughterhouse 5, we’ll all be seeking out copies of “A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian”, (ASHOTIU) [1] by Marina Lewycka. I’m not looking forward to this book. To me, it looks like the sort of thing that is supposedly worth reading, but will end up boring the snot out of me. A few years ago I would have dismissed it out of hand for having no spaceships, but I’m a bit more mature these days. What it does have, however, is the full backing of the Bedfordshire Library Service, as ASHOTIU [2] is one of the books in their Reading Groups Collection.
The Reading Groups collection is a list of books that Bedfordshire libraries has multiple copies of, so they can be lent out en masse to book clubs like us. Well, not quite like us, because we are a bad-ass book club and we don’t take no snot-boring books. Apart from this one [3].
Personally, I enjoyed Moby Dick. It was mostly a good book, which was good enough for me. But it’s obviously one of those books that people in book clubs feel they should read, as is Slaughterhouse 5, as is A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.
This is weird, because there are a lot of books. I mean, of all the books ever written, how come we end up mining this vein of similar material for book clubs? Why are we all reading the same stuff?
That’s why I’m not going to waste your time giving you my review of Moby Dick. Smarter people than me have written about Meville’s opus. Instead, I’m going to give you a list of other book. Instead, I’d like to use this space to leave a list of books that are good, but not ordinarily read by book clubs. If you’ve got suggestions, please leave them in the comments.
[1] Bless you
[2] Bless you. Aw, you must have caught the sniffles.
[3] And Sebastian Faulk’s shit-awful “A Night in December”, which is almost an argument for book-burning because of it’s fucking middle-class smugness.
Pete's Book Suggestions:
1 - Corvus, by Esther Woolfson - I'm hearing amazing things about this memoir of raising a crow. It's a non-fiction book about animals, which is pretty far away from the regular book-club territory, whilst still being fairly mainstream...
2 - Bone, by Jeff Smith - the epic comic tale of the 1990s and early 2000s, which has a comprehensive website at http://www.boneville.com/. I actually cried at one point when I read this. The only downside is that it's kinda expensive because it's an extremely large comic book
3 - For I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison - Ellison, the bad boy of SF, wrote this seminal short story of science fiction in 1967. I've never read it, but the wikipedia entry gives me the heebie jeebies.
Ross:
Becky:
I didn't enjoy Moby Dick. I'm not one to shy away from classic literature (I mean I studied English at university, so that would be a pretty poor choice if I did), but I'd put Melville's novel in the same box as James Joyce's Ulysses (which I did attempt once and didn't get very far with), in that it's one of those books that is notoriously difficult to finish. Oh well, maybe one day Joyce.
Anyway, I did manage to finish this and I'm pretty proud of myself for it, just because it was such a long, hard slog. I can safely say this book is just not my cup of tea and because of that I'm not even going to attempt a proper review. This book requires serious academic analysis before you can even scratch the surface and begin to appreciate all of what Melville is trying to say here, and even though I didn't personally enjoy it I can still appreciate that technically speaking it is a work of brilliance. If you seriously want to read Moby Dick and think you may enjoy it go and find some essays on it first and really get stuck in.
If you have absolutely no interest in the history of the whaling industry then the chances of you finishing are doubtful (the ratio is about 20% actual story and 80% whaling facts). You also don't get to see THE whale until page 446 and the story ends on page 469.
My copy also tells me that this is: “the greatest novel ever written by an American.” Well, I can think of a few American writers that I would read over before I'd contemplate picking up Melville's Moby Dick again: Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Poe, Hawthorne, Capote, Kerouac, Lee, Salinger, Yates, Chandler, Cain, Hammett, McCoy, Alcott...
… I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
And ignore Pete and his crankiness, I'm optimistic about the next couple of book club choices, but then, nothing could be worse than that damn Warlock book a few posts back.
Lost Souls is the debut horror novel of Poppy Z. Brite, released in 1992; back when writing about vampires wasn’t the norm. It features five main characters:
Steve – a stubborn, violent alcoholic, who plays guitar in the band, Lost Souls. Ghost – best friend of Steve and vocalist for Lost Souls. Prone to visions and traits of empathy and psychic abilities. Nothing – teenage vampire on a ‘coming of age’ quest to locate his real family – is a fan of Lost Souls. Zillah – an androgynous, green-eyed vampire prone to cruel and insensitive acts. Connected to Nothing in certain ways, if you will. Christian – an old-school vampire, who unlike Zillah, cannot tolerate sunlight or imbue food or alcohol.
Other characters include two more Vampires, Twig and Molochai; both childish and idiotic, along with Ann, Steve’s ex-girlfriend, Arkady Raventon, a sinister magic shop owner and Jessy, Nothing’s biological mother, devoted to the myth of the vampire.
The novel revolves around a club in Missing Mile, just outside New Orleans where kids dress in black, seeking acceptance. In step Zilliah, Twig and Molochai, who Jessy, a confused 15 year-old runaway, has been searching for. Steve and Ghost soon get drawn in and must choose whether to save a life or seek revenge, whilst further events just become more and more twisted. It’s one of those kinds of books.
Pete:
Lost Souls is a blood-soaked gender-bending book that tries hard to be as transgressive as possible. Sadly, that transgression wears off after the gory introduction, unless you find florid descriptions of homosexual sex shocking. And there is a lot of man-on-man action in this book.
Being neither gay, nor inclined towards "goth" subculture, I felt that this book was a complete loss for me. The text had a workman-like quality to it that struggled to find poetry in pre-Katrina New Orleans and other settings, but managed to be perfectly serviceable in terms of moving the plot along. Mysteriously the book, and the author, seem to have a rabid fan base. Why? In the front of my library copy was a review from Amazon that stated "this book will make you cry". This book couldn't even make me cry with boredom, so why are people so passionate about it?
Perhaps it's the vampire mythos. All of the major vampire stories around in contemporary fiction have ardent fans (hello, TwiHards!) and the blood-and-guts approach taken in Lost Souls makes the book stand out. A little. I don't want to get into a long analysis of why beautiful ageless immortal rapists are so popular in fiction, as I'm just going to chalk it up as some flipside of fascination with celebrity.
(Because, really, aren't these vampires just bad-to-the-bone versions of celebrities? We're allowed to think that maybe we can be famous, so perhaps the antihero nature of vampirism appeals to the narcissistic tosser in all of us?)
It doesn't seem like there will be a shortage of tossers anytime soon, so Lost Souls will continue to draw people in with its depiction of empty, hollow sexual acts, and gory but boring deaths.
BONUS MATERIAL:
Russel Brand's thoughts on celebrity in contemporary society are worth listening to, considering his Byronic public persona is as close to the traditional literary vampire as you can get:
Ross:
Oh god, where to start? Right, let’s get this out of the way straight off – I am NOT the target audience for this book. A sexually confused 15 year old, floppy haired, dresses in black Marilyn Manson fan? Shit, you’ve probably got 3 copies of this with different covers, all in hardback, plus the connecting short stories and a poster on your wall, all signed by the author - probably in blood.
I would like to kick off with some praise first; this book was actually a fairly straight forward read – the plot, such as it was, ran smoothly, the main characters well fleshed out and the descriptions, fairly explicit. However, despite it being easy to follow – I just didn’t care. With the exception of Ghost, none of the other characters (around 10+) had any redeeming qualities whatsoever. I mean, everyone likes reading about a bastard, but it’s nice if the bastard actually goes home from his day of bastardry and we find out he looks after a load of kittens; or works part time in a nursing home. For the most part, they all seem to be lost in a heady competitive world of ‘who can I fuck over the most to get what I want?’ The world itself seems completely crapshack – there seems to be little or no authority; the amount of bodies that pile up due to Zillah, Molochai, Twig and Christian’s actions barely calls a sniff from the local constabulary, save for once in the novel over the death of a young boy, which is then never mentioned again. If Barnaby had been sniffing around, you bet he would have caught them – just follow the trail of bodies – shit, even Reg Hollis would have had a chance.
I found myself hating a lot of the characters – they were pretty much all hedonistic wasters (Ghost and Steve aside, the former being a weirdo and the latter being an alcoholic rapist), even Ann, who having fallen under Zillah’s thrall, was desperate to be with him, even though halfway through the novel he fucks her then chucks her. Chicks love bastards. They all seemed completely untouchable and unfazed regarding their immoral actions, something which I suppose comes with having no soul and fangs.
Actually, I felt some compassion towards Steve, the anti-hero of the piece. Written as a complete jerkass and a rapist (of Ann), he was incredibly troubled and tortured person, who held my interest more than the flamboyant and enforced wackiness of the vampires, who were beyond tedious in their thrust-it-in-your-face homo eroticism and blood-drinking foreplay. Steve and Ghost’s relationship and bond was the only part that actually kept me going with this novel; had it centered much more on them, then perhaps I’d view the whole experience differently; then again, the book would just be a weird road-trip diary of a drunk who robs vending machines, a white-haired weirdo who can read minds and them both occasionally kissing but “totally not in a gay way, dude” (see near the end of the book, where they both share quite a tender moment together).
Also, how often is the word ‘blood’ used in this book? I’m surprised this book wasn’t printed on red paper. Beyond tedious; but I would love to see what the Stephenie Meyer fanclub would think to this.
Additional:
We have a new member to book club! Stuart Adams, illustrator extraordinaire as joined our ranks and came to his first meeting the other week – hopefully we didn’t scare him off with are chaotic rambling.
Pete:
It's hard for me to write on this blog, because the running joke is that for every book we've read we could just put "Pete thought it was shit".
I have to admit, I didn't enjoy Tom Sawyer. I might even have used the word "shit" to describe it. Twice. Not like, "it's shit shit", meaning it's double shit, or perhaps that it was low-quality dung. I was trying to say "it's not very good" in a situation where brevity was of the essence. And I did it twice.
(Mainly because it's hard to say "I felt that the limitations of 19th century literature made this a difficult book to enjoy for somebody who likes challenging 20th and 21st century literature, although the language used was pretty interesting" in an SMS message, but also because I thought the book was shit.)
I've been watching a lot of the classic 1980's TV show, Moonlighting, recently. It's got a really good reputation, although everybody says that it goes downhill when the two main characters get it on. Cybil Shepard is amazingly hot in it, and although Bruce Willis doesn't do anything for me, I can tell that he's a lot better looking as a skinny young guy with hair than in his current incarnation as a sort of pink Ben Grimm.
But the thing about Moonlighting is that it's a really old TV show. It's about 25 years old, and it's the little things that really stand out. Sometimes the main characters aren't in focus in a shot - unthinkable in a contemporary show. The plots are weird, shambling things, held together by the snappy one liners and sexual tension. Up until midway through series two, there is only one other recurring character besides the two leads.
Compare that to Lost, the recently finished confuse-a-thon that ran on Channel 4 and Sky for the past few years, and Moonlighting starts to look like an am-dram production from BATS.
In the same way, Tom Sawyer is a very different beast to the books being written now. We expect a book to tell us one story, straight through from the start to the end. I guess 19th century readers, picking up the early editions of Mark Twain's new book in 1876, would have expected as much a peek into the life of somebody else as a story that grabs them.
But I'm not that reader. And if I don't like classic literature like Tom Sawyer, it's because I approach a novel in a slightly different mindset to somebody alive in 1876. Maybe I just watch too much TV.
If something bad can happen, Patrick Ness will make sure it happens tenfold. Any moments of safety and hope are ultimately turned upside-down by certain events in ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’ making it a harrowing reading experience.
Those unfamiliar with the story; here’s a brief synopsis – I don’t want to give too much away (part cribbed from Wikipedia):
Part of the Chaos Walking trilogy, ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’ tells the story of Todd Hewitt, the only boy in the fictional Prentisstown, located on New World. To start with he is oblivious to Prentisstown’s history; believing that all the women have died as a result of a germ released by the Spackle, a native species to New World. The germ has a side effect however, all the remaining men in Prentisstown can hear each others thoughts, described in the book as ‘Noise’. Todd manages to locate an area in the swamp where Noise doesn’t seem to exist – an area of quiet. Aided by his faithful companion; a dog named Manchee, he is pursued by an insane preacher, discovers a mute girl from a crashed settlers ship and a whole load of trouble and heartbreak.
The general concensus from the group was a positive one, many of us praising the likable (and at times terrifying) characters and tense, bleak outlook. Here's what a few of us thought:
Ross:
I had a big problem with this book – I couldn’t put it down. As someone who reads primarily in their lunch break being late back to work was a frequent occurrence. Patrick Ness has the ability to create strong, engaging characters that will affect you – their vulnerability is laid bare on almost every page; save for perhaps one – who seems to exist in the realm of magnificent bastard. Ness essentially creates a crapshack world; piling an immense amount of hardship, struggle and violence upon his main character, Todd Hewitt, who for the most part, just wants to live a normal life – or as normal a life he can on New World, where everyone (including animals) can hear your thoughts.
Before you go thinking this sounds like a depressing slog - it's far from it. Despite the adversity the main character suffers, there's always a glimmer of hope and respite, whether it be in the form of a new character, eager to help the weary travellers, or an idea of salvation - a sanctuary from what's following them. Ness knows how to build tension and believe me, there are several scenes where your heart will be racing. At the end of one particular chapter I had to put the book down (contradicting my opening line here) and do something else just so I could take in what had happened.
What is appealing about Ness's style is the way the book is written like a lost journal, with certain words misspelled from Todd's point of view, ('preparashuns' for example - this is how he hears and thinks it is spelled) yet still make sense to the reader. His companion, Viola, who he discovers in the swamp, is more educated in her speech patterns and mannerisms, due to being from a different society all together, having crash-landed on New World.
In the book feeling like an audio log, or missing journal we have Todd speaking directly to the reader; what Todd sees and experiences - we see and experience and to someone who is an avid first-person shooter fan, this style of writing greatly appealed to me. This essentially, painted a very vivid picture in my mind of the whole escape that Todd and Viola embark upon - an escape from Prentisstown - an escape from Aaron (a character that will make you the reader, howl at in both anger and fear) and an escape from their old lives.
Becky:
One of my most annoying habits is my inability to shut up about books I have particularly loved. I will say right now that this is a very special book, or rather, that this is a very special series because now that I have read them all I find it impossible to talk about one without the others.
I stumbled across the Chaos Walking series while working as an intern at Walker Books. I had heard good things about them so, when I started The Knife of Never Letting Go, I expected a good read. I left my work experiance adamant on getting this read at our book club. My annoying need to talk was going into overdrive.
The first book is all about flight and as it was so swiftly read I felt like I was running alongside Todd and Viola as they tried to outrun the Mayor and his men. Noise is used brilliantly by Ness to demonstrate how difficult it is for Todd to hide anything let alone remain undiscovered by an impending army. As a result the relationship between Todd and Viola is even more touching as he accepts her silence, just as, she accepts the harsh reality of hearing every one of his thoughts.
I won't mention the plot of the other two as I don't want to ruin it for anyone but, I will say, the two other parts of the trilogy The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men were read just as greedily. Desperate to find out what was going to happen to Todd and Viola I missed my stop on the tube, on one occasion, due to my total absorption; I also found myself cancelling plans with friends a couple of times to feed my new addiction. Definitely a rarity for me.
The only thing that saddens me is that some people (our own Derry, Pete and Si included) would never gravitate towards the Young Adult section of a book shop. Patrick Ness has, quite rightly, won major awards (including the Guardian prize for children's fiction) for Chaos Walking. Monsters of Men is, only the second Y.A. novel, nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke award which is a huge accomplishment. The book snobs are missing out on a truly beautiful piece of writing which is far superior to all the Twilight-esque series out there.
Despite its demographic the reader is subjected to all the cruelty of the world in which Todd has had to exist. This is what I adore about Patrick Ness. He does not patronise his readers or water down what he is trying to say which is what often makes a lot of Y.A fiction so unappealling. The result is harsh but refreshing. Anyone can read these books: it is a series about two teenagers it is not written exclusively for teenagers.
I have not read a series (of any genre, I might add), in a long time, as absorbing or as heartbreaking as these books. When I finished the final book at 3 o' clock in the morning I was a blubbering mess but, also, so sad that they were over. The characters and the story stayed with me for a long time after, and, because of that, I will be the first person in line to pick up a copy of Patrick's new book A Monster Calls when it comes out in May.
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