This review contains some minor spoilers.
Sometimes a young adult book is just the thing. The last week has been particularly hellacious for me. Starting a couple months after my mom died in 2008, I’ve devoted a significant amount of time to assisting my grandparents with their daily living. During that time I’ve made well over a dozen trips to the emergency room for my grandfather’s heart condition, and lately because Gram’s been bleeding. That bleeding turned out to be cancer, for which she had surgery Tuesday. Wednesday while visiting Gram, Gramps had a heart attack. Since then, he’s been on the 7th floor while Gram is on the 11th. That’s really just the tip of the stress that I’ve been under this week.
I bring that up because I was faced with a choice of what reading to bring along while staying with them Sunday (before the surgery). I’m slated to begin reading Bolano’s The Savage Detectives starting next week and thought about starting early, but something of that complexity didn’t seem to be a good idea. One thing about young adult books is that they don’t usually require a whole lot of deciphering. That’s not to say they are one-dimensional; The Knife of Never Letting Go is a great counter-example for that accusation. But a young adult novel only rarely makes a reader re-read portions just to figure out what’s going on. When stressed out and having to get one’s reading done in short increments, a complicated plot or narrative style is not welcome.
The premise behind the first book in Ness’ Chaos Walking series is audacious. On the colony New World, all animals and men broadcast their thoughts 24 hours a day. Ness’ comments about his idea was that the ubiquity of information from email, Twitter, and the like was overwhelming. Then take that to the nth degree, where their thoughts can’t be turned off like the digital world can be. Not only can’t men stop broadcasting their thoughts, but no one else can really stop listening either. It’s like noise (capitalize that for the purposes of this book).
The next twist to throw into that mix is that only men broadcast their thoughts. Women do not. They are forced to hear everyone’s Noise, but their own minds are their own. This aspect of Noise is the key to the book winning the James Tiptree Award. Obviously, just that in and of itself wouldn’t be enough, but Ness bases a lot of gender role social commentary on it, and does it very well.
Todd Hewitt is the youngest boy in Prentisstown, a small settlement on the edge of a swamp. No women live in the town. Todd is told that there was a war against the native Spackle when he was a child, that Spackle released a virus that caused Noise and killed the women. One of the first things that we find out that people can lie despite their thoughts being broadcast. Instead of just censoring what you say, you have to censor what you think. A listener can tell you aren’t exactly forthcoming, but won’t know what’s true. Of course, censoring one’s thoughts isn’t exactly easy.
Anyway, the plot of the book kicks off when Todd Hewitt senses a blank spot in the swamp. Something that isn’t emitting Noise. On reporting this to his guardians (his mother died in the war with all the other women), they immediately dig up a backpack for him and tell him to run. Prentisstown has a secret that the boys aren’t told until they become men, and his knowing this blank spot exists will trigger bad shit beforehand.
On his way out of town running through the swamp, Todd runs into the blank spot again. And it’s a girl, crash-landed from a space ship bringing more settlers. She doesn’t emit Noise. She joins him on the run from Prentisstown, on what quickly turns into a hero-quest-like plot.
There’s a lot to like here. The big draw, of course, is the examination of gender roles. Todd’s grown up with all sorts of ideas about men and women told to him exclusively by men. Which really isn’t too far off from how boys are raised in America. The men of Prentisstown have some odd ideas about women. Todd overhears much about big bosoms and dirty deeds. Idealized women, where the ideals aren’t exactly ideal.
Running across the planet with the crash-landed girl, Todd has to revise some of what he thinks about his place. When he starts off, he doesn’t listen very well. He’s pretty narcissistic. He doesn’t question himself much either, though he does beat himself up after he screws up. He assumes all sorts of things about the girl. Of course, he can’t read her thoughts. On the other hand, she can read his. She doesn’t have to assume anything about him. She knows. But Todd doesn’t only ignore her, he even ignores his dog. He can hear Manchee’s thoughts, though the dog isn’t smarter than any other dog. But he is good at warning Todd of approaching people, friend or foe. Todd doesn’t listen though. He stupidly assumes the dog is stupidly just wanting to pee again.
The MacGuffin of the quest is a safe place for Todd, the girl, and Manchee. But the real point is to watch Todd grow up by encountering and overcoming (or sometimes not overcoming) obstacles along the way. As quests go, the hurdles fit pretty well with the storyline, rather than seem random and disconnected like some hero quest stories. Their timing, however, feels much too much like a construct. Everything seems to happen at exactly the right or the wrong moment.
There’s one big issue touched on that isn’t really explored or resolved in this first volume of the series. The first are the native Spackle. Colonization of a place that others live is a well explored trope, but I can’t help but think Ness can bring something to the table on that front after seeing his treatment of gender issues. The ubiquitous Noise could really make that interaction interesting, particularly given the reasons for the war with the Spackle in the first place. Possibly less interesting morally will be what happens when the new set of colonists arrive.
I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the entries in this series.
Title: The Knife of Never Letting Go
Author: Patrick Ness
Series: Chaos Walking; 1
Imprint / publisher: Candlewick Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: 479 p.
Publication date: 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-7636-3931-0
