LitPick Review
More Than This
On a frigid winter night off the coast of a Washington beach, a seventeen-year-old boy drowns, his head dashed into a stretch of unforgiving rock just off the shoreline, fracturing his skull and severing his spinal cord. There is no hope, no chance of survival. The boy dies. His life is over. Finished. Ended.
Or is it?
The boy wakes up on a sidewalk, naked, alone, and afraid. He is confused. He is weak. He is also not dead. His heart still beats, his lungs still to pull in air, and, as he struggles to his feet, he discovers his muscles still function. As he rises, he discovers he is standing in front of a house that looks vaguely familiar. He feels a pull towards it, but as he stumbles across the sidewalk, he can’t help but feel that something is very wrong. A thick layer of dust covers everything—houses, cars, streets—weeds grow abundant and untamed, a heavy layer of silence blanketing it all. He begins to walk, function, and attempt to understand why. But what he discovers as he begins to live his life in his weird new world is something that not even his own death could prepare him for.
“Is this a dream?” He thinks, the words coming to him slowly, thickly, as if from a great distance. “The last dream before death?”
Opinion:
Wow. That’s the only word I can think to type right now, huddled up in front of my computer, my eyes glazed over and my movements still quite sluggish from staying in the same position for hours barreling through this book, only stopping to eat or possibly stretch. Just….wow. It was new, it was provocative, it was different. It is getting increasingly difficult to find a book that introduces a completely different idea that has not been influenced by other factors (other novels, media, recent events), but Patrick Ness certainly has—and with great and reckless abandon. His writing style and character development are close to flawless, and, along with vivid language and a sense of literary awareness, shape this book and make it a wonderful read. The only compliant I have is that, at the beginning, many unknown factors that are foreshadowed in a quick amount of time, making it a little hard to keep up with the novel until it eventually catches back up with itself again. Ending with a storyline that opens the door for a possible (and hopeful) sequel, More Than This by Patrick Ness is a glorious read for someone who is looking to add a little something more to their booklist.
“Hey.” He says, whispering it now. No one answers. Not a bird or a squirrel or the fox and her kits. No one answers from any quarter. He’s alone.”
I would recommend this book for ten and up, or for advanced comprehensive readers, as the storyline and plot can be hard to follow for younger booklovers. It has a few basic expletives, brief sexual references, and also mentions homosexuality, so if it bothers you or your child, you have been forewarned.
The boy is alone. Completely. He knows not where to go, or who to turn to. Will he be able to survive his strange new world—or will it be the one to finally conquer him? Patrick Ness’s More Than This is the only way to find out!
