Thank you to Mr. Strang, who presented this week's Book Review - the first in-person review for 2022. Mr. Strang reviewed 'The Knife of Never Letting Go' by Patrick Ness. The Knife of Never Letting Go is book one in the Chaos Walking trilogy and is available from the PNBHS Library.
"What would it be like to live in a world where everyone could hear and see what you were thinking?
The Knife of Never Letting Go follows Todd Hewitt, an adolescent boy, who is days away from of becoming a “man”. He lives on New World - a recently colonised planet – in a community called Prentiss town, which is made up entirely of men. This setting creates an interesting concept where the internal thoughts of every living thing (animals as well as humans) are infected with “The Noise”; a germ released by the planet’s indigenous inhabitants “The Spackle”, that displays a person’s thoughts and mental images. Todd has grown up in a world of constant noise and expectant danger. His best friend, and companion, is his dog Manchee who is a great source of humour.
The plot of the story begins when Todd investigates an area of silence in the swamp beside Prentisstown. What he discovers puts his life in danger, and he is quickly caught up in a thrilling chase to find safety at the capital city of Haven, the original settlement of the first wave of colonisers to New World.
- In order not to spoil the plot I will finish this summary with a quote that might intrigue you into considering your actions as young men and boys…
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them”
On his journey to Haven, Todd must find a way to hide his identity and secrets when others can hear and see what he is thinking.
One of the lines that resonated with me is “Without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.” Noise in The Knife of Never Letting Go is a thought-provoking interpretation of the way we engage with technology today. We are constantly bombarded with information and sound, all of which manipulates the way we behave, making it increasingly difficult to find a spot of quiet.
The secrets and misinformation of Prentisstown are slowly unravelled as Todd moves from the innocence of a child to grappling with his identity as “a Man of Prentisstown”. Most of the people he meets treat him with either suspicion or outright hostility. One of the things that hampers his progress, to understand the dark and sordid history of Prentisstown, is his inability to read the book that his mother left him before he was born. In this story, as always, our understanding of history depends on who is telling it.
The opening pages are the most difficult part of the book. Because Todd is illiterate many of the words he has heard are spelt phonetically – but this makes for a more interesting and intense story that feels authentic to its main character. Todd’s journey is a difficult and dangerous one, but it is the way that he evaluates his decisions and choices that make this story interesting.
The narrative of the book is fast-paced and exhilarating and only takes a chapter to start accelerating. While Ness writes Todd’s first-person perspective in a style that is deliberately confused and sometimes unstructured, he has control over his craft, and it is interesting how quickly you can adjust to seeing this world from his protagonist’s point of view.
The knife is the symbol of Todd's arduous, violent journey toward manhood. It physically represents the choice he has to make about what kind of man he will be: and the type of man that those in Prentisstown expect him to become. This series fits well in the coming-of-age genre as it deals with questions of value, character, and morality. There is authentic evil in this story and genuinely scary characters that express a darker, twisted side of masculinity.
I was continually drawn back to this novel because of the compelling questions that this book raises.
- The comfort of group conformity and the risks of thinking as an individual.
- What it takes to be a man?
- The desire to control or eliminate what cannot be understood.
The Knife of Never Letting Go toys with other issues such as colonisation, genocide, racism and sexism. However, these issues are sincere to a unique plot and a narrative that incorporates a rich and dynamic backstory. I urge you all to read The Knife of Never Letting Go, and the two books that follow The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men. However, as always boys….. the choice is yours…."
