More madness

I've been sitting here trying to decide which pop culture reference to use for The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. Is it a post-apocalyptic novel, like The Giver? Is it a Michael Crichton thriller? Is it a journey, like The Lord of the Rings? After all the books I've read, those seemed like some of the most likely options, but I've come to realize it's like none of them. It's something entirely different.

The first work The Knife of Never Letting Go reminds me of is Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights, for British readers). Like that novel, Knife is a high-concept one: we open on a world pretty much the same as ours but for one important difference. In The Golden Compass, the difference is the animal soul which accompanies every living human. In The Knife of Never Letting Go, however, it is that everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts, all of the time -- and thus, humans are "Chaos Walking" (also the title of the trilogy which this tome opens).

Erm, actually, there are some exceptions. But never mind -- we always hear what's on the mind of the main character. First-person narratives are not a new thing; they were pioneered by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and by other epistolary novels. However, more effectively than in any other book I've read, Patrick Ness manages to get inside the head of Todd, the main character. My thoughts and concerns were often Todd's own. In scenes of horror, sickness, and death, these techniques are exceptionally good.

Of course, everyone else hears what's on Todd's mind, also, which brings me to the second work The Knife of Never Letting Go reminds me of: The Invention of Lying, a movie written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson. In that film, each character was a compulsive truth-teller (before the protagonist discovered the ability to say an untruth). However, I never quite believed the openness of that world as well as I did this one. That may partially be due to the fact that here, the compulsive mind-talkers have sometimes spent years covering up things they don't want revealed about themselves through their thoughts. It may also help that the mind-talkers are given a foil: women do not have the condition. Therefore, once Todd leaves his home of Prentisstown, he meets people whom he can't read -- and thus we have conflict and intrigue in a book whose very gimmick is transparency.

I should mention that this book had some of the most obvious Meaningful Names in all of literature. Todd comes from Prentisstown, or "Apprentice Town", where boys are made into men. He and his counterpart, Viola, head to a city called Haven for respite from their pursuers. The climax, in which one character is tempted to bite a metaphorical apple, takes place at The Falls. It was like hitting the reader over the head with an anvil.

Another problem: sometimes Todd had to describe the scenery, and he wasn't very good at it. No, that's not right. Patrick Ness wasn't very good at it. There are ways that people notice things, I think, and Ness could have done a better job at it. The pictures were not picturesque.

But that's nitpicking. This is the most thrilling book I've read since Under the Dome at the beginning of the year. It's also got some of the best character development. Boy growing to man -- humble town becoming much more sinister -- enigma growing transparent. The book is action-packed, and touching, and finishes with a killer twist ending. It may also be the closest I've ever come to crying while reading -- the book is that good at getting you to relate to the main characters.

By all means pick this up, along with the sequels. (The Ask and the Answer is released in the US now, and Monsters of Men will follow soon.) I suspect that, like The Aldous Lexicon, these are meant to be read as three parts of a whole. Here's hoping that the next ones are this brilliant.