Remember how you felt when you saw the first Star Wars movie (the actual first one made, Episode IV, 1977)? It was epic, right? Good vs. evil, the rebels vs. the Empire, the young hero vs. the powerful villain. Star Wars had it all. And though I was only 10 at the time, I was so enthralled by the mythic story that I went out and bought the album of the John Williams' soundtrack and replayed moments over and over in my head as I listened to the score on my Mickey Mouse turntable. I think I've seen Star Wars thirty times. And even decades later, nothing compares to that first movie, to those characters, to that story.
Until now. If you haven't read Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking series, Books One and Two, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer, run, do not walk, over to your e-reader or the closest bookstore and get these books! I read a lot of YA literature...a lot...and a lot of it is mediocre. These books are riveting, suspenseful,tragic, and beautiful. And I see that the third volume is coming out in a few months! I am already giddy with anticipation!
The Knife of Never Letting Go is narrated by Todd Hewitt, a boy living in a town of men and Noise. A war with the planet natives left all of the women dead and spread a germ through the male population that makes every thought audible (the Noise). The town, Prentisstown, named by Mayor Prentiss after himself, is populated by mostly miserable men, with a few sadists thrown in, and the Noise makes for a chaotic overload of information that no one can escape. Todd is fairly miserable, too, since he hasn't reached manhood yet, he is ignored by most of the men, and there's no escaping the Noise, no matter where he goes. That is until Todd and his dog, Manchee, find a hole in the Noise. This discovery opens a Pandora's Box of secrets about Todd's world, secrets the men of Prentisstown have worked for years to lock up. With a target on his back and his every thought available to others through his Noise, Todd runs from Prentisstown with Manchee, only to be pursued by a relentless army across the landscape of his planet.
The characters Ness creates in The Knife of Never Letting Go are vivid, sharp, terrifying, and terrified. Todd is a frightened boy whose poignancy is as palpable as his Noise is audible, and Ness manages to make Manchee into the most truthful dog-character I've ever encountered. The preacher/madman Aaron who hunts them is monstrous and wretched. And Ness somehow manages to make the Noise into a sort of character itself, one which reveals and betrays without sentimentality.
Todd's flight is also his journey into manhood, and Ness makes that odyssey at once tense and humorous, epic and human. Through Todd, Ness poses some thoughtful questions about manhood: When does a boy become a man? Are there rites of passage through which a boy must go in order to be considered a man? And what are the characteristics of a man? In addition to the questions about manhood, Ness addresses the idea of privacy and individuality. How can one realize his individuality without the privilege of privacy? What does it mean to be an individual? Can a person really have an individual identity in our world when we have lost so much of what was private to us?
In The Ask and The Answer, Todd's story continues. Now, Mayor Prentiss and his army have taken over the town of Haven, and Prentiss has declared himself President. There are lots of WWII overtones here: burning books, centralized power in the hands of one man, separation of families. Todd is forced to organize the captive native creatures of the planet. This is done with a kind of branding, on their arms, with numbers which cannot be removed. Shades of concentration camps, no? Much of the book ponders whether those who go along with the leader out of fear (for those they love, for their own lives) are culpable for the leader's atrocities.
So, both books are pretty weighty. But Ness manages to infuse in both lots of exquisite suspense and action. His writing is heavy on end-of-chapter cliffhangers, and he makes some decisions about characters that are absolutely heartbreaking, even as they are inevitable. It's clear from the start that the Noise is meant as a symbol for our time. It reminded me of the feed in M.T. Anderson's Feed, with the same questions about selfhood.
Like Feed, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer are beautiful books that caution but do not preach. I will say that it would be difficult to use these books in most middle school classrooms. Not only is there a lot of violence in these pages, but profanity is pervasive in both volumes. They are books that could be challenged by some parents. If you are lucky enough to teach in a place where you are given some latitude when it comes to this sort of thing, consider adding Ness's books to your curriculum. If not, read them for your own pleasure. You won't be able to put them down.
