INTERVIEW: Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness is the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy, which includes the award-winning The Knife of Never Letting Go (2008), The Ask and the Answer (2009) and Monsters of Men (2010). I've been blown away by what I've read so far in this series and I eagerly await the third and final installment.

Fantastic news for Aussies: Patrick Ness will tour Australia and New Zealand early next year. Between February 24 and March 20 he will be stopping at Perth, Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, New Zealand and Brisbane.

**Spoilers in question 8**

1. How did you first get the idea for the Chaos Walking books?

I always say they started with a serious idea and a stupid idea. The serious idea was about information overload, that the world is already pretty noisy with mobile phones, the internet, networking sites, etc. The next logical thought was, what if you couldn't away at all? That's where Noise came from. And the stupid idea is that I don't like books about talking dogs because they never talk like an actual dog would talk. So I thought it'd be funny to write one the way I always thought my own dog growing up would talk. It was good fun. And from those two ideas, a story started to form.

2. Did you always intend for the Chaos Walking books to be aimed at a young adult audience, and what is appealing about writing for this demographic?

The story itself kind of told me it was for young adults rather than the other way around, which I think is probably how it should really go. I was as surprised as anyone. What's appealing is that teenagers aren't snobs! If you respect them and tell a good story, they'll follow you anywhere. But you do have to tell that good story, so you've got to be on the ball all the time. It's a great challenge, very liberating, too.

3. Who are some of your favourite young adult books and authors?

There are some excellent young adult writers around, aren't there? People like Meg Rosoff, Marcus Sedgwick, Terry Pratchett, Siobhan Dowd, Mal Peet, I could go on...

4. I'm intrigued by Noise and how it affects the men of New World. Do they feel disempowered by it? Would New Elizabeth be a safe and happy place if it wasn't for the Noise?

Well, I tried to show that there could be different reactions to Noise, with Prentisstown being the worst. But as they journey along, Todd and Viola see places like Farbranch where it's not so bad or Carbonell Downs where it's less good but plausible. And then there's Haven, where things are complicated. It's what you'd ask of any place, I think; safety and happiness are tenuous things that need to be worked for against our natural fears.

5. As I remember it, Mayor Prentiss came to New World as a settler. Were his intentions on setting out to wage war, or did he start out as a good man?

I suspect the answer's messier than just one or the other. People never get to power by a single action or intention; there are opportunities along the way that you can take or not take and those build on each other. In fact, it's the theme of The Ask and the Answer about how you can even take what seem to be a series of small right decisions and still end up possibly doing something terrible. I suppose it's about how many compromises you're willing to make before you lose your humanity. As for the Mayor, maybe he had a predisposition, but you still need the circumstances to help you along. I suppose the crux of it is that I don't think anyone is beyond redemption. You have to have hope for everyone. Now, whether they want to be redeemed is a whole other question...

6. Is Todd the rightful president of New World?

Ah, well, is anyone the "rightful" president of anywhere? It's that old axiom that wanting to be in power should automatically disqualify you from ever having it. Todd would probably be an excellent president of New World, but he'd never want to be it (which is probably what would make him an excellent president and so on around the circle...)

7. Your upcoming book tour includes stops in Australia. Have you been to Australia before, and do you have any favourite Australian authors?

My very favourite author of all time is Australian, Peter Carey, and I end up reviewing a lot of Australian fiction for UK newspapers because I've read so much of it, like Tim Winton and Murray Bail. I can even reference Patrick White with confidence! Peter Carey is fantastic, especially at implying a larger imagined universe than is just in the particular book. I love that. And I have been to Australia, way back in 1993 when I was a fresh-faced college lad. Can't wait to get back there.

8. You probably can't answer this, but I have to ask. Is Ben really dead? The pictures Todd sees in Davy Prentiss's Noise towards the end of The Ask and the Answer are ambiguous. I do hope he's alive!

Well, I'm not exactly known for my unwillingness to kill off nice characters, I'm afraid. I get asked this question over and over again about Manchee, too. I'm an evil, evil man and I'm sorry for that.

9. Is Monsters of Men complete? Can you tell me what we can expect in six words or less?

Monsters of Men is in its final stages, yes. Six words on what to expect from it, hmmmmm: War, surprises and a killer ending.

10. What can we expect from you in the future? More young adult books I hope!

I've got some ideas brewing on the young adult front, definitely. I'm as interested as anyone to see where they go. Stay tuned!

The Ask and the Answer has been shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize, which The Knife of Never Letting Go won last year. Congratulations, Patrick!

Review: The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

This is a spoiler-free review, but if you're like me and are allergic to reading reviews for books you are really excited about, scroll down for release information for book three in this series, Monsters of Men.

If I thought it was difficult writing a spoiler-free review of The Knife of Never Letting Go, it's going to be nigh on impossible to do the same for The Ask and the Answer. The joy of reading these books, especially The Knife, is going in completely blind, not knowing the setting or even the genre.

But I'll give it a go.

The Ask and the Answer picks up the story a few hours after we left it at the end of The Knife. A new world order is about to be born, and whoever is in control will greet the new settlers, Viola's people. It's a story of resistance and persecution, men, women and Spackle struggling for a position in New World.

As with The Knife, the story warms up slowly, ambiguously, like riding up the hump of a rollercoaster blind-folded. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What the hell is going on? While The Knife was a chase narrative, The Answer sees the story of Todd and Viola become an overthrowing narrative--but it's not clear exactly who should be overthrown.

For those of you who thought Viola wasn't fully realised in The Knife, she gets a much elaborated role in book two. (Okay, so that was a bit of a spoiler, but we all knew she wasn't REALLY going to die, right?) Every few chapters alternate between her and Todd, and while her voice isn't quite as strong as his, and I still love Todd the best, it's interesting to see things from her perspective. Todd changes immensely during this book. By the end I had a whole different picture of him in my mind. He gives so much life and humour to these books, and he's becoming one of my favourite characters ever. There's a new villain too. Where Aaron was a Terminator-like villain and definitely the bad guy, the new villain is not so easy to pin down. I found myself oscillating wildly as I read, unable to decide who to trust, and it's little wonder that Todd reacts the way he does. I kept hoping that he would run, that this would turn into a glorious chase novel like the last one, but there's nowhere for him to go. As a result book two is a lot darker than book one, with scenes reminiscent of Nazi death camps. I also found myself reminded of scenes in District 9 for its alien cruelty.

But what REALLY made me mad is what happens to the women. Because of Noise, a virus from the Spackle that makes all men hear each others thoughts, there is a deeply ingrained mistrust of females, who are unaffected. The structure of society goes men, women, Spackle, with not a lot of breathing room between women and Spackle. But another delicious thing about this book is that while it appealed to my sense of feminine self-righteousness, Ness isn't flattering his female readers that they are the superior of the species--one of the possible villains is a woman, and I have the feeling that she's going to have a big, bad role in book three.

I was furious reading this book, tearing through the last 300 hundred pages in one sitting HATING several characters with all my might. I'm getting all riled up right now just thinking about it and the fact that there was another cliffhanger ending and I have to wait until MAY 2010 (!!!) for book three, Monsters of Men--but that's if you live in Australia and the UK. US residents have to wait until FALL! On his website, Ness says that Monsters of Men will finish off the trilogy "with a bang". I don't doubt it.

Again, I don't give ratings, but five effing stars.
(except I don't say effing)

Dystopia Review #16: The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go (2008) is one of the strangest books I have ever read. It's also one of the best. I had very little idea of what it was about when I picked it up from the library except that I had heard somewhere that it is dystopian. And is it?

Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown. Prentisstown isn't like anywhere else. It's not on Earth. There's no women. And everyone can hear each other's Noise. Noise is thoughts--words, pictures, feelings. So there's no secrets.

A month from his thirteenth birthday, the date when he will become a man, Todd stumbles across a well of silence, and what he finds there forces him to run.

So, no secrets. Well that's a lie! This novel is one big secret. Keep in mind that when I say this book is strange, I don't mean obtuse or confusing. Rather, The Knife was exceedingly easy to read and understand, which is another reason I'm giving this book a great big recommendation. Three cheers for complex but thoroughly understandable plots!

It's written in Todd's Prentisstown vernacular, all yer dog and desperayshun and effing this and that. It's almost a stream of consciousness, but not quite. The writing is far more grammatical than Todd Hewitt could ever manage, and thank goodness for that because actual stream of consciousness writing drives me nuts. Patrick Ness uses just enough slang and bad spelling to give the impression that we're hearing Todd's thoughts, and that's a magical thing for a writer to be able to do.

It's also rather funny:

The girl just looks at me, her forehead still creased, holding her cut.
Which is kinda bleeding a lot.
"Stick, Todd!" Manchee barks.
"And where the hell were you?" I say to him.
"Poo, Todd."
I make a "Gah!" sound and kick some dirt at him.

Oh, the animals can talk too, by the way. But this isn't a fantasy novel. Everything has a scientific basis and the events are set sometime in the future, which makes this a sci-fi novel. A sci-fi novel with a decidedly dystopian flavour. Todd's escaping from one of the most oppressive, religiously fanatical, nutty societies that ever was. And the villain! Oh the villain. He's like one of those horror movie killers that just won't bloody die even though they've been eviscerated and shot and stabbed and beaten to a pulp.

Tangent: I'm going to make a wild stab in the dark here and say that many dystopian novels are written by atheists, for atheists. My reasoning is purely anecdotal: there are so many stories about society collapsing and being ruled by a totalitarian religious faction. It could also be that dystopian fiction wasn't invented until after Charles Darwin cried "Apes!"* because it takes a special kind of gloomy, one particular to atheists, to realise that if you have a shitty life, there ain't no puffy cloud waiting for you in the afterlife. This is it. So it better count for something. And that's a pretty important theme in dystopian fiction. End tangent.

By the time the truth is explained to Todd Hewitt, he's already worked the truth out for himself, and so has the reader. But that's okay. It's rather satisfying to able to say smugly, "I know already. Cheers for the update, though."

One little bug-bear: There's this whole big thing about no one being able to hide their thoughts from anyone else because of the Noise. But things are hidden from Todd his whole life, and things happen, big things, that he should hear because no one can keep secrets. But secrets are kept just the same. Which doesn't make a lot of sense. But, again, I'll go along with it. It's the only tiny weakness in a great big wonderful book.

The Knife is a fabulous modern addition to my challenge. As I progress I keep thinking to myself, "this is my favourite of the challenge" ... "no, this is!" I'm going to have to have a good debriefing post to get it all straightened out. But that aside, if I gave ratings The Knife would get 10 out of 10. Five by Five. Gold stars baby.

Book two in this series, The Ask and the Answer, was just released last month. So no agonised wait to see what happens next, yippee!

*Actually, "Finches!" would be a better approximation. Here's a bit of trivia for you: On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. The word dystopia was coined in 1860.