The Knife of Never Letting Go
by Patrick Ness
Imagine a world in which you can hear everybodyÕs elseÕs thoughts, and they can hear yours. A world where it's virtually impossible to keep secrets, and where even the feelings of dogs are audible. A world awash with thought-generated "Noise." Young Todd Hewitt lives in such a world Ð a thinly-populated planet whose human colonists havenÕt fared too well in the twenty years or so since settlement. Todd is the youngest boy in Prentisstown, and the only one not yet to have reached manhood. Since Prentisstown is a town without women, he looks set to remain the youngest. Todd already has problems, but things get considerably worse when, a month before the birthday that will make him a man, his guardians Ben and Cillian hustle him from the town in obvious fear for his life. Todd finds himself fleeing an unknown danger at home, and embarking on a journey to an uncertain destination.
Patrick NessÕs The Knife of Never Letting Go (the first of the Chaos Walking trilogy) is an intriguing science-fiction novel, and in Todd Hewitt Ness has created a likeable narrator, whose language and world-view cleverly convey the peculiarities of his upbringing, without being obtrusively affected. Ness has thought hard about the difficulties of communicating Ð or even staying sane Ð in a place where oneÕs most fleeting thought is immediately available to others, and he has devised some ingenious and convincing solutions to the narrative problems it raises.
Matters become still more complicated when Todd makes the acquaintance of Viola, a girl whose space shuttle has (in a nod to Shakespeare) been wrecked on the surface of ToddÕs unfriendly planet. Viola's thoughts, unlike Todd's, are silent: she has no Noise - a lack Todd finds it hard at first to cope with. Their friendship develops, however, and together with ToddÕs dog Manchee they flee the pursuing Prentisstowners across a landscape of small farms and townships in search of the settlement called Haven, where they believe they may be able to find help. The journey becomes a little repetitive at times: I think the book would have been stronger had it been 50 pages shorter. Nevertheless, Ness is skilful at keeping his powder dry, and several of the plot twists took me by surprise Ð particularly those concerning the true state of affairs in Prentisstown, the history of which is quite different from what Todd has been led to believe.
There is one plot twist I could have done without, however Ð although this is a complaint directed at Walker Books rather than at the author. The spine of this book informs us that The Knife of Never Letting Go is the first in a trilogy, but it is nowhere suggested on the jacket that it is in fact just one third of a continuous story, destined to stop abruptly with our heroes in severe danger, no plot lines resolved, and an implied 'To Be ContinuedÕ sign flickering over the endpapers. If you have spent £12.99 in the belief that you are buying a novel, rather than making a down payment on the first instalment of one, then you will feel distinctly cheated. ItÕs not the first time such a trick has been played on readers (I've had to make the same complaint before in Armadillo), but it remains rather shabby.