The Knife Of Never Letting Go

‘I have just read a great review of Patrick Ness’s book “The Knife of Never Letting Go” in Fantasy Book Critic and can’t wait to get my hands on it. I might be passed forty years old, but I can’t resist good young adult books, which for most of the time, I can’t really understand why they would be defined as young adult.

I don’t know what it is about these books, and their hero’s, Harry potter (of course) and Laura from the Golden Compass, but I love the feeling I have when reading these books.

I guess that being transported to a completely different world for the kind of adventure that would never in a thousand years ever happen to you in reality, drenches you (me) in a calmness not available in real life, allowing me to fully enjoy the adventures at hand.

Anyway, the first sentence in the book has been praised in every review around

“The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing to say.”

And if the rest of the book is anything like that first sentence, than no doubt it should be a fantastic read.

At the end of the review, which I am going to send you to read in just a minute, There is a QA with Patric Ness (who looks just like his name, buy the way, and is as cute as can be (-;) in which he says something so smart and applicable to all writing and art forms, that it deserves to be quoted, printed and hung on my think board

Q: Upon reading “The Knife of Never Letting Go”, I couldn’t help but think of the many authors who wrote stories featuring teens but were in fact talking to a wider audience, such as Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. Did any of these writers influence you in any way?

Patrick: Not as such. I always say when I’m teaching that the only success I’ve ever had (and this is 100% true) is when I’ve written entirely for myself. That is, wrote a book that I would kill to read myself, so in that sense I’m only ever writing for an audience of one. What I find happens is that when I’m really enjoying the story I’m telling myself, that joy sticks to the page in ways you can’t see but ways a reader will pick up on and like. So I try to avoid thinking about my “audience” as much as I can, because then I start getting bogged down in what I “should” say rather than what I want to say, then the story suffers and you end up not saying very much at all.

Ok. Now click here and read the review, then, if you have a yen for this type of books Go and by it. I am going to.