Some time
ago on Twitter Donalyn Miller was raving about one of her favorite series, The
Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. I mentioned that I hadn’t read those yet
but had read Monster Calls, which I adored. Teresa Kravtin offered, kindly, to
send me the first volume, The Knife of Never Letting Go. It arrived and
I kept meaning to go read it but it fell to the bottom of my “to do” list.
Fast
forward to last month. Several friends in town expressed interest in a “Young
Adult” book club. I set one up and our first book is The Knife of Never
Letting Go. How to describe this wild ride of a story? It is to do the
impossible, but let me try.
To begin
I need to say, Patrick Ness, you’re a cruel, cruel man. You break my heart with
these books. I don't know how in the world I missed this series when it
originally came out but am so grateful that I have found it now.
This book
starts with Todd who lives in a settlement called Prentisstown in the New
World. In this New World your thoughts are spoken out loud in what they call
"noise". It's really loud and confusing. Todd and his dog, Manchee,
are forced to flee Prentisstown and discover the truth about themselves and
this society.
The first
60 pages or so I was constantly asking myself, "What the heck is going
on?" I was so confused and so much didn't make sense. I persevered and am
so glad I did. I think this is an excellent lesson for my students. They often
want to understand the story immediately, or don’t recognize that they are
confused. I was very conscious of that as I read. I’d find kernels of
information that I would file away and figured they’d all come together in the
end. (And boy did they ever.)
This is a
book that will stay with me long after I have finished. However, I would
recommend having book two and three close at hand. I threw this one down in
frustration on the last page - a bit of a cliffhanger you could say. Todd,
Manchee, (and other characters I won’t name here) are characters you won’t forget.
This is an amazing series not to be missed.
Finally,
I think Teresa Kravtin said it best when I tweeted her that I finished. She
sent me these two tweets back, and she is so right.
