Backlight

I read this trilogy a while ago now, but it has stayed with me. So I want to share it with you.

This, the first book in the series, made me physically ache with joy, pain, hope and despair. It has the most beautiful, equal relationship at the centre of it between two, well, children really - at least by chronological age. 

The setting is kind of Sci-Fi/Western. The pioneer way-of-life, the fact that these people came together as "settlers" on a new planet, allows for Todd's strange combination of maturity and childishness, practical knowledge and social ignorance. 

In Prentisstown, there are no women, they all died over a decade before the story begins, and "Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise." Todd's struggles to filter and control the "Noise" - a world of information overload with no escape, no way to filter out or mask the unwanted thoughts and feelings except to try to hide them in plain view by putting out other thoughts to blur the "Noise" you make - made my heart go out to him.

This book found my vulnerabilities and spoke to them. 

Everyone's response to this book will be different. because this is one of those books that tells you as much about yourself as it does about the characters portrayed. Patrick Ness might well become one of my favourite authors because of his ability to do just that.

This entry was posted on Monday 22 July 2013 and is filed under dystopia,Jackie,YA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.