Book Review Saturday – ‘More Than This’

Right.

For today’s book review post, I’m going to attempt the impossible. It’s something you should definitely not try at home; I’m a trained professional, and all that.

Step back! I know what I’m doing. I think.
Image: heritagefightgeardisplays.wordpress.com, picture by Phil Buckley

I’m going to try to write a book review without giving away any pertinent details about the story, because the book I’m reviewing is the sort of tale that you just can’t spoil. Pretty much anything you say about what happens in it may, possibly, ruin someone else’s enjoyment, and that would be A Very Bad Thing.

The book is this one, right here:

Image: jenryland.blogspot.com

Patrick Ness is an author who gets my blood pumping. I adored his ‘Chaos Walking’ trilogy, so much so that I simply couldn’t wait for the third book to be published in paperback, and I had to buy it in hardback; normally, I hate having two-thirds of a trilogy in one format, and the last book in another, but I made an exception for this one. As well as that, I loved his ‘A Monster Calls’ more than I can express in words. It touched my heart in ways that no other book has ever done, or ever will. ‘Chaos Walking’ and ‘A Monster Calls’ are works of genius – I don’t think that’s overstating the case – and so it might not be a surprise to learn I expected great things of ‘More Than This’.

I’m still not sure, really, whether this book lived up to those expectations, exceeded them, or did none of the above. Reading it has put me in a spin, and I suppose that’s the point behind it. My reaction is, probably, what the author was aiming for; if so, then he achieves his writerly goals in spades.

It’s not giving anything away to say that the protagonist of this book, a seventeen-year-old boy, drowns within the first three pages. The whole point of the story is that we are reading about what happens to him after that. The description of his death is shocking and brutal – we are left in no doubt that he suffers, albeit briefly, before the cruel sea dashes him against some rocks, causing him an unsurvivably grievous injury. The opening chapter is typical of the book, employing sparse and beautiful language, with powerful and gripping imagery and characterisation. The chapters about the boy are written in the present tense, which gives them a chilling immediacy and makes the reader feel as though they are taking each step of his journey with him.

For, of course, there is a journey to be taken.

The boy wakes up in a place familiar to him, but also shockingly unfamiliar. As he puts together where he is, and why he has ended up there, we learn about his life and family, his past, and what he has suffered up to this point. The author handles all this – the boy’s thought processes, the setting, the ways in which he struggles to figure out what’s happening, the fear and isolation and crushing loneliness that start to afflict him – with sensitivity and skill, and he creates a truly sympathetic character in his protagonist. The boy wonders if he is in hell, or if he is being punished; as his story is told, we learn that he has spent many years punishing himself for something that happened when he was a child, and for a while I wondered whether this ‘hell’ was of his own making, an extension of the suffering he’d imposed upon himself all through his life.

Whenever the boy falls asleep in this weird world, he relives sections of his life. We meet his parents, his younger brother, his schoolmates. We learn of his love for one of his friends, and their tender relationship. These episodes do not feel like dreams; the boy is literally reliving these moments, and they cause him great pain. At the heart of his sorrow and grief, and his feelings of loss, the reader knows something dark and disturbing is lurking; we know there is a huge, heartrending secret – one too painful for the boy to even admit to – waiting to be uncovered.

I really can’t say much more than this about the plot. Any further detail would destroy the mystery of the book and take away from its central strength – in other words, the unknowable vacuum around which it is built. What I can do is tell you how the book made me feel.

A bit like this, sort of…
Image: rgbstock.com

This is a thoughtful and philosophical novel. It has a teenager as its protagonist, sure, and most of the other characters we meet are also teenagers or children, but… it’s not, in so many ways, a ‘typical’ YA book. It’s a story about life, about fear, about the unknowability of another person’s mind, about hurt and loss and pain and love, and about friendship. It asks huge questions – why are we here? What’s the point of life? Why do bad things happen to good people? – and the answers it offers ask more questions than they solve. This idea, that everything we find out about ourselves or the world actually causes more problems than it explains, is a central theme in the book. Despite its subject matter, it is suffused with positivity, especially toward the end, and – like so many books I love – it shows the power of friendship and self-sacrifice, and how important the connections between people are.

Having said that, I really did feel that the book built up to a crescendo that never really happened. I was crushingly disappointed by the end, but perhaps that’s a personal thing. There were so many things I wished to have explained – and I’m not talking about ‘What’s the meaning of life?’ and ‘What happens after we die?’ because, of course, Patrick Ness knows as much about those things as I do, or as anyone does – but details within the story world, images and characters created in the book, and which could have been explained a bit more clearly. There was one image in particular, a feature of the landscape in this strange ‘other’ place, that I was convinced was full of meaning but which was left unexplored; I found that annoying.

Then, maybe what the author wants is for each reader to come to their own conclusion. If so, then that’s fine – I just wish he’d given us slightly more to go on.

I would recommend this book, but with the caveat that it might upset you if you’ve been bereaved, or if you’re particularly sensitive to reading about the sorts of thing that go in within abusive families. There are some heartrending scenes in this book, sure, and so it won’t suit everyone. However, if you want to read a book which will make you think, and ponder the reality around you, and stimulate your capacity to wonder, then maybe this is the book for you. Just be prepared to be frustrated by it, too.

The most memorable line in it, for me, is this:

Know who you are, and go in swinging.

This is excellent life advice, I think. Believe in yourself, and accept no lies. If I take nothing but this away from ‘More Than This’, then I’ll be happy.

Happy weekend! May you read well.

 

Tipping Point

Do you think there’s an actual point at which you just can’t take any more bad news?

Image: scq.ubc.ca

I’m a bit of a news junkie. I like to know what’s happening in the world. Most mornings, the first thing I do is turn on the radio to get the early news bulletin so that I can get some idea of the shape of the day. Lately, though, all that’s been happening is one horror after another, culminating this week in one of the saddest news stories I’ve ever heard in my country, a story which will stay at the forefront of my mind for a long time to come. I’m just not sure I can take any more news which breaks me open like a sledgehammer to the chest, and I wonder if I should just stop taking it all in, for a while at least.

I know, before anyone suggests it, that I have a cheek to write a blog post like this when none of these dreadful news stories are about me directly and they have no personal impact on my life – and believe me, I’m aware of how lucky I am – but as a human being who is engaged with the world and who has empathy for her fellows, it does affect me. I have wept painful tears this week at the needless loss of life, the horrors perpetrated on children by their parents, the dreadful sorrow of those left behind after an accident, the waste of humanity that occurs whenever power structures begin to rumble into place and governments rise or fall; I’ve wept because it’s always the powerless, the average person, the individual like me, who is crushed beneath the wheels of change or between the teeth of revolution.

It makes me afraid that one day I won’t be the lucky one any more, and that one day it will come for me, too. It makes me afraid to live in a world where these things can happen. It makes me wonder what I can do, if there’s anything at all, to help.

I am a person with a limited set of skills. I can’t change the world through politics or diplomacy, or with money or influence; all I can do is put words together into sentences, and hope they’re good enough to read. But if everyone did what they could – in fact, if everyone was permitted to do whatever they could, however humble – to add their thread to the picture, then I think we’d be in a much better position. However, because there are so many in the world who are not allowed to add their voice to the collective melody, it’s even more important that all of us who can do something actually do it. I am a privileged person – free, healthy, and protected – and I owe it to those who possess none of these gifts to do whatever is in my power to make the world better for those who will come after us.

I may never be a successful writer, but I hope I’m a successful human being. That, after all, is the most important thing any of us can do.

I hope everything in your corner of the world today is good, and peaceful, and happy, and I also hope that tomorrow, I’ll be in a more positive frame of mind.

Image: welcometoourreality.blogspot.com

 

 

Wednesday Write-In #50

This week’s words were:

recycled  ::  hindsight  ::  manic  ::  pair  ::  button up

Queen, Mother

Looking back, my mother’s struggle becomes very clear. I always knew when she was going through a bad time; I just didn’t know what to call it, then. The first sign was her lips – when they disappeared, I knew it was time to batten down the hatches. Then her eyes would start to bulge, and she may as well have had her thoughts – zip, zip, zip, zip, zipzipzipzipzipzizizizizip – projected onto her forehead for me to see, a jumble of colours and shapes and sounds that had meaning only for her. All I was sure of was that her mind was somewhere else, somewhere that loved her, in its own way, and liked to keep hold of her just as much as I did.

It was just the two of us. Sisters-in-arms, Mum liked to call us. Dad was long gone. I could never imagine his face in colour because all we had of him was a single black and white exposure which sat in a frame on the hall table, but at least he was smiling in it. He had teeth and hair and perfectly crinkled crows’ feet, just like an old-time movie star. I used to stare at him for hours, wondering how someone who looked like him could have made someone who looked like me.

She woke me up early, that morning, so early the sky was the colour of metal and the birds were still asleep. Come on, she said. Let’s do something wonderful. My eyes stung as I slid out of bed and followed her to her room. She’d taken out every stitch of clothing she owned and laid it neatly on her bed, the floor, the top of her chest of drawers… everything was folded, and perfect, and precise. I helped her pack it all away into her rolling suitcase and as many plastic bags as we thought we could carry, and off we went to donate it, every bit, to the war effort.

We’d been trudging for an hour, my arms almost dislocated from their sockets, before I thought to ask her what war? And what could they possibly want with my mother’s old underwear?

Her legs were so long, and her stride so elegant. She walked like a queen – I shall always remember that! – her suitcase behind her like a lady-in-waiting. She was so fast, and when she talked to herself, she never remembered to talk to me. I struggled after her, listening for the clopclopclop of her shoes, doing my best to carry heavy bags of coats and dresses and nightgowns, all of them bearing her scent. I remember her tall and slender back, disappearing. Distantly, absently, I heard the squeal of brakes, but by the time I caught up, there was a small crowd gathered, and they wouldn’t let me near.

The woman who came back home with me to collect my things was very kind. She explained how I couldn’t live here any more, but that soon I’d have a new home and family, and they’d love me very much. She wouldn’t answer when I asked her how mother would find me; she just folded her lips around one another like she was sealing an envelope, and concentrated on getting me into my coat. We were in such a hurry that I almost walked by Dad without remembering to bring him. Wait! I said, stretching back to grab him. My father! The lady took the photo from me and looked at it. Your father? But that’s… Then, her face unravelled, and she smiled down at me as she handed back the tiny frame. Come along, darling, she said. Bring Daddy, and then let’s go.

I left the photograph lying face down on the hall table as we closed the door on an empty house, my mother’s perfume still hanging in the air.

Image credit: askmen.com