The Rest of Us Just Live Here, by Patrick Ness

Have you ever wondered how or why it is that the crazy stuff in books and films always happens to the main character? How “coincidental” it is that the person who’s telling the story is the one person in all the world that has the special ability to overthrow the evil despot, or is the mythical hero prophesied about in the ancient texts? I guess it’s because that is the story – but does it have to be? What if the story isn’t the “hero” but someone normal who’s just trying to figure out their own life while all the world-ending stuff is going on in the background?

Because let’s face it, not everyone can be the chosen one. In fact, most of us probably wouldn’t even want to be the chosen one. Even if you’ve got super healing powers, there’s usually quite a lot of blood involved, and that’s before you factor in the weirdness and the monsters. Mikey, for one, is perfectly content not being one of the indie kids. The end of senior year is in sight and his focus is basically on getting there without the school blowing up (again) and whether or not he has the courage to tell Henna he loves her. But: there are many ways in which a world can implode. The question is, can he and his friends avoid the blast radius?

Although it’s really nothing like it, The Rest of Just Live Here strangely reminded me of nineties TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There’s an episode in which Buffy is busy saving the world as usual, but where the story follows Xander, who has been temporarily ousted from proceedings because he keeps getting in the way. Ironically enough he winds up running around town to stop a formerly dead kid from blowing the place up, while in the background Buffy and the rest of the Scooby gang fend of giant hell monsters.

Likewise, there is some fairly odd stuff going down where Mikey lives – strange lights, creepy cops, stampeding deer, the indie kids dying left, right, and centre whilst also encountering the most absolutely true and earth-shattering love of their lives – but this is all background. We get tongue-in-cheek snippets of it at the opening of each chapter, but otherwise only see events as they interfere with Mikey’s entirely normal, everyday existence. Except Mikey is fighting in his own way: an anxiety problem that exhibits in a form of OCD and self-doubt that as graduation rapidly approaches – and all the potential changes that that hails – begins to spiral.

If I was forced to compile a list of my top five authors, Patrick Ness would undoubtedly be in there. The whole premise of this book is fairly brilliant and he absolutely, one hundred and ten percent pulls it off. The world-catastrophe aspect is witty and full of humour – he clearly takes the piss out of several bestselling YA books, but never in a mean way; it’s like an insider joke, a clever ‘wink wink’ to the reader that makes you think, yes, this author gets me.

What he does really, really well, though, is understand Mikey’s anxiety. The way this is presented – especially during a particularly candid discussion Mikey has in the last quarter of the book – makes me feel like Patrick Ness really knows the incipient, needling ways that anxiety works on the mind: that you fear you’re making a fuss over nothing, and how fear of the fear takes over, to the point where the thing you were afraid of in the first place is almost lost amidst the bigger fear of yourself and your perceived failure. This is massive, and massively important. I’ve read plenty of books that talk about anxiety, but none that really get it like Patrick Ness has got it here.

What this all means is that while Mikey might not be fighting to save the world in the same context as the indie kids are, he is trying to save his own particular world. As fissures open around the town, letting the all-powerful Immortals slip through, so the fissures begin to appear in Mikey’s friendships. New guy Nathan is getting in the way – and what is his deal anyway? – Mikey’s feelings for Henna are getting ever more confusing, and his fear that he is the least wanted and least needed of the group looks like it’s about to be proven. How much control does anyone ever have over their own stories? Can Mikey claim – or reclaim – his destiny?

Some authors are very good at writing particular kinds of story; Patrick Ness is very good at writing all sorts of stories: The Rest of Us Just Live Here is as different to More Than This as A Monster Calls was to The Knife of Never Letting Go. It is equal parts insightful and fun. Exactly how he came up with the brilliantly ridiculous names for the various indie kids is anyone’s guess (um, ‘Satchel’?). And did I mention how Mikey’s best friend Jared also happens to be the god of cats? There is plenty of opportunity for metaphor, but as Jared says, “Why does everything have to mean something, though?” Not everyone can be the chosen one and not every book has to say something amazing – although, ironically, by the very act of Patrick Ness saying this, he makes it mean something.

More Than This, by Patrick Ness

Is it a part of the human condition that we all feel, somehow, that there has to be ‘More Than This’? More than what we have, more than what we know, right now? But if there is more, what is it? Where is it? And what if it’s not at all what we’re expecting?

A boy is dying. He’s drowning, spluttering, gasping; it’s not an easy death. He dies. And then he wakes up. Is this heaven? Hell? Or somewhere else? He’s all alone. Or is he? Everything he thought he knew about the world, about himself, his parents, is about to be brought into focus and questioned. Everything you thought YOU knew about the world, yourself, your parents, is about to be questioned. What if what we think is real, isn’t? What if a choice was made, years ago, that you can’t undo?

When Seth dies, he wakes up in a place both familiar and fathomless. Just when he thinks he is beginning to understand it, a new layer and then a new layer and then a new layer is revealed. Even when you think you know - when Seth thinks he knows - what is going on, you are still left wondering whether it’s the whole truth or just another layer. Patrick Ness plays with this and bends our perception of reality in a multitude of ways, blurring the boundaries of time, of life and death, of the virtual and the real. Although packed with action, he writes in a way that is kind of slow and steady, but instead of drawing away the intensity, it makes it feel as if we’re viewing the story through a glass, darkly, adding texture and another subtle layer of the surreal to Seth’s experiences.

In More Than This, Ness has created a world that is at once explained and unexplained. Is it the future, or is it the now? He simultaneously answers all the questions his writing raises - almost as they pop into my mind – yet without actually really answering them; it’s a book that could be filled with holes, but by the end, none remain. And it’s a book that at first glance is something entirely different from his most popular previous work – The Chaos Walking trilogy – but which quietly nudges its way close to the ideas and techniques used and interpreted in that previous world.

More Than This is surely the most extraordinary book of the year. It is mind boggling, it will strip all speech from your brain. It will make you want to grab hold of Patrick Ness and shake him and ask ‘Why?’ over and over again. But it’s a book that cannot be explained without ruining it - I cannot précis the plot any further, or give you a run-down of the settings or the characters because in order to appreciate its sheer wonder and brilliance you have to experience the unfolding story for yourself. The most important thing that I can tell you about More Than This is that you simply have to read it.