More Than This by Patrick Ness
Apr. 11th, 2014 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
A boy drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments. He dies.
Then he wakes, naked, bruised and thirsty, but alive.
How can this be? And what is this strange, deserted place?
As he struggles to understand what is happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not be the end? Might there be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife?
17-year-old Seth has just walked into the cold sea off the Pacific North West in the United States. He’s been dragged under by the currents, his body smashed against the rocks.
He dies.
But then he wakes up back in his old house, in the small English town his family emigrated from when he was younger. Only the town isn’t how he remembers it. Burnt and decayed, there’s no evidence of anyone else living there.
As Seth tries to make sense of what’s happened to him, he meets Regine and Tomasz who tell him an incredible story, one that gives him hope that there may actually be more to life than he had previously thought …
Patrick Ness’s standalone YA novel marries existential crisis with post-apocalyptic wasteland in a clever, moving tale about suicide, despair, hope and survival. It’s a brave novel that marries a number of different themes within one coherent story that keeps both Seth and the reader guessing as to what’s going on all the way until the end. In fact, I can imagine the ending being frustrating to some readers because it doesn’t give you any concrete answers, leaving it up to you to decide just what’s happened. Personally, I enjoyed that because it doesn’t patronise the reader and I found myself thinking about it long after I’d closed the book. Ultimately, it’s another moving, intelligent book from Ness that touches on the fears faced by gay teenagers and as such I think it’s worth your time.
It’s difficult to go into specifics about this book without dropping massive spoilers. The story crosses genres to ask questions both of the main character and of the reader and one of the great touches is the way that Seth asks the same questions and makes the same assumptions that the reader does. For me the plot really gets going when Regine and Tomasz arrived. I thought that Tomasz with his formal speech patterns, grumbling and wild schemes was the real star of the story whereas Regine was a slightly more by the numbers sparky teen with a sad backstory. Although I loved Tomasz, Seth does hold the attention, especially his flashback scenes where you slowly get shown how he came to want to kill himself and his relationship with is parents.
All in all this kept me hooked from beginning to end and I thoroughly recommend it.
The Verdict:
Patrick Ness’s standalone YA novel marries existential crisis with post-apocalyptic wasteland in a clever, moving tale about suicide, despair, hope and survival. It’s a brave novel that marries a number of different themes within one coherent story that keeps both Seth and the reader guessing as to what’s going on all the way until the end. In fact, I can imagine the ending being frustrating to some readers because it doesn’t give you any concrete answers, leaving it up to you to decide just what’s happened. Personally, I enjoyed that because it doesn’t patronise the reader and I found myself thinking about it long after I’d closed the book. Ultimately, it’s another moving, intelligent book from Ness that touches on the fears faced by gay teenagers and as such I think it’s worth your time.
Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.
A boy drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments. He dies.
Then he wakes, naked, bruised and thirsty, but alive.
How can this be? And what is this strange, deserted place?
As he struggles to understand what is happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not be the end? Might there be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife?
17-year-old Seth has just walked into the cold sea off the Pacific North West in the United States. He’s been dragged under by the currents, his body smashed against the rocks.
He dies.
But then he wakes up back in his old house, in the small English town his family emigrated from when he was younger. Only the town isn’t how he remembers it. Burnt and decayed, there’s no evidence of anyone else living there.
As Seth tries to make sense of what’s happened to him, he meets Regine and Tomasz who tell him an incredible story, one that gives him hope that there may actually be more to life than he had previously thought …
Patrick Ness’s standalone YA novel marries existential crisis with post-apocalyptic wasteland in a clever, moving tale about suicide, despair, hope and survival. It’s a brave novel that marries a number of different themes within one coherent story that keeps both Seth and the reader guessing as to what’s going on all the way until the end. In fact, I can imagine the ending being frustrating to some readers because it doesn’t give you any concrete answers, leaving it up to you to decide just what’s happened. Personally, I enjoyed that because it doesn’t patronise the reader and I found myself thinking about it long after I’d closed the book. Ultimately, it’s another moving, intelligent book from Ness that touches on the fears faced by gay teenagers and as such I think it’s worth your time.
It’s difficult to go into specifics about this book without dropping massive spoilers. The story crosses genres to ask questions both of the main character and of the reader and one of the great touches is the way that Seth asks the same questions and makes the same assumptions that the reader does. For me the plot really gets going when Regine and Tomasz arrived. I thought that Tomasz with his formal speech patterns, grumbling and wild schemes was the real star of the story whereas Regine was a slightly more by the numbers sparky teen with a sad backstory. Although I loved Tomasz, Seth does hold the attention, especially his flashback scenes where you slowly get shown how he came to want to kill himself and his relationship with is parents.
All in all this kept me hooked from beginning to end and I thoroughly recommend it.
The Verdict:
Patrick Ness’s standalone YA novel marries existential crisis with post-apocalyptic wasteland in a clever, moving tale about suicide, despair, hope and survival. It’s a brave novel that marries a number of different themes within one coherent story that keeps both Seth and the reader guessing as to what’s going on all the way until the end. In fact, I can imagine the ending being frustrating to some readers because it doesn’t give you any concrete answers, leaving it up to you to decide just what’s happened. Personally, I enjoyed that because it doesn’t patronise the reader and I found myself thinking about it long after I’d closed the book. Ultimately, it’s another moving, intelligent book from Ness that touches on the fears faced by gay teenagers and as such I think it’s worth your time.
Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.
