I’m at a bit of a loss as to what sort of rating to give The Knife Of Never Letting Go. On the one hand I struggled at times to get into it, found the villain rather cartoonish, and the narration style (and phonetic spelling) of our protagonist, Todd, soon became something of an irritayshun. But on the other hand, I did feel really quite sad and angry more than a few times, so it obviously got to me while my back was turned. Todd […]
“Stories are the wildest thing of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.
Pretty much every night, Conor wakes up screaming from the same nightmare. So when the monster shows up in his garden, just after midnight, he’s not as scared as you may have thought that he’d be. After all, he deals with some pretty unpleasant things on a daily basis. The bullies who pick on him in school. The fact that he seems to be falling out with his only friend. The teachers either ignoring him or being overly understanding and solicitous. His father, who seems […]
A Workout for Your Tear Ducts
This is a beautifully written YA novel that is appropriate for all ages and deals with a terrifying topic: the illness of a parent. The idea for A Monster Calls originated with writer Siobhan Dowd who died before she could write it. Author Patrick Ness was approached to create a story from Dowd’s notes, and he has produced a painfully honest and sad account of how a 13-year-old boy handles the illness of his mother. You will cry, but this story is so beautiful and […]
Toxic masculinity and misogyny given free reign
Todd Hewitt lives in a community peopled only by men, and has one month left until he too becomes one. All the men are afflicted with something called “the Noise”, meaning they can hear each other’s thoughts, all the time, all over town. There were women in the community once, but they didn’t survive the infection that brought the noise. Todd’s mother was one of the last women to die, while Todd was still a baby. While Todd and his dog, Manchee, are out walking […]