Shortlisted for the 2009 Branford Boase Best Debut Novel Award
Shortlisted for the Carnegie Award 2009. Winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2008 and Booktrust Teenage Prize 2008.
The electrifying and unflinching young adult debut novel about the impossible choices of growing up by award-winning fiction writer Patrick Ness.
A word from the author:
'The Knife of Never Letting Go started as an idea about information overload. We're constantly surrounded by information - internet, emails, texts, etc - whether we want to be or not. To me, this can sometimes see overwhelming, sometime just so incredibly loud that it's impossible to make sense of. And I start thinking, what if you really couldn't escape? What if information never, ever stopped? And that gave me the idea of the Noise and of an intelligent, thoughtful young man buckling under the weight of it. There would come a day when he'd have no choice but to run...'
What the Carnegie Award judges said:
'A bleak and unflinching novel with fascinating characters and extraordinary dialogue which creates a fully-realised world that the reader really buys into. The dog Manchee is an inspired creation! Ness conveys a real sense of terror and the ending is devastating. A novel that really stands out.'
Imagine you're the only boy in a town of men. And you can hear everything they think. And they can hear everything you think. Imagine you don't fit in with their plans. Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping secrets from him. Secrets that are going to force him to run.
"Ness is a young writer of exciting quality and unpredictability." The Times
"One of the best first sentences I've ever read and a book that lives up to it!" Frank Cottrell-Boyce
'Ness ... moves things along at a breakneck pace, and Todd's world is filled with memorable characters, foul villains.' Financial Times
'Furiously paced, terrifying, exhilarating and heartbreaking, it's a book that haunts your imagination.' Sunday Telegraph
'There are some great stand-alone novels for 12+, but one in particular stands out as special: Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go.' Amanda Craig
Author
About Patrick Ness
Patrick Ness was born on an army base called Fort Belvoir, near Alexandria, Virginia, in the United States. His father was a drill sergeant in the US Army. He lived in Hawaii until he was almost six, spent the ten years after that in suburban Washington state, and then on to Los Angeles, where he studied English Literature at the University of Southern California.
His main job after graduating was as corporate writer at a cable company, writing manuals, form letters and speeches and once even an advertisement for the Gilroy, California Garlic Festival (this is true). If you're American and hated your cable company, he probably wrote you a letter of apology.
He got his first story published in Genre magazine in 1997 and was working on his first novel when he moved to London in 1999. He's lived here ever since. Sometimes he teaches creative writing but mostly he tries to write 1,000 words a day, 'come hell or high water'.
In May 2008, he published The Knife of Never Letting Go, his first book for young adults. It won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize and he hasn't looked back since.
Here is an interview with Patrick Ness where he talks about his new book The Rest of Us Just Live Here.
10 Things You Didn't Know About Patrick Ness
1. He has a tattoo of a rhinoceros. 2. He has run two marathons. 3. He is a certified scuba diver. 4. He wrote a radio comedy about vampires. 5. He has never been to New York City but... 6. He has been to Sydney, Auckland and Tokyo. 7. He got accepted into film school but turned it down to study writing. 8. He was a goth as a teenager (well, as much of a goth as you could be in Tacoma, Washington and still have to go to church every Sunday). 9. He is no longer a goth. 10. Under no circumstances will he eat onions.
