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| Genre/Form: | Science fiction Juvenile fiction Fiction |
|---|---|
| Material Type: | Fiction, Secondary (senior high) school |
| Document Type: | Book |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Patrick Ness |
| ISBN: | 9780763639310 : 0763639311 : 9781442068674 1442068671 |
| OCLC Number: | 199401725 |
| Notes: | Jacket photographs by Harold Sund/Stone/Getty Images ; Yoshinori Watabe/amana images/Getty Images - dust jacket. |
| Awards: | A Junior Library Guild selection |
| Description: | 479 p. ; 23 cm. |
| Contents: | The hole in the noise -- Prentisstown -- Ben and Cillian -- Don't think it -- The things you know -- The knife in front of me -- If there was -- The choices of a knife -- When luck ain't with you -- Food and fire -- The book of no answers -- the bridge -- Across the bridge -- The wrong end of a gun -- Brothers in suffering -- The night of no apologies -- Encounter in a orchard -- Farbranch -- Further choices of a knife -- Army of men -- The wider world -- Wilf and the Sea of Things -- A knife is only as good as the one who wields it -- The death of the worthless coward -- Killer -- The end of all things -- On we go -- The smell of roots -- Aaron in a thousand ways -- A boy called Todd -- The wicked are punished -- Downriver -- Carbonel Downs -- Oh never leave me -- the Law -- Answers to askings -- What's the point? -- I heard a maiden call -- The falls -- The sacrifice -- If one of us falls -- Last road the Haven |
| Responsibility: | Patrick Ness. |
Abstract:
Reviews
WorldCat User Reviews (1)
Slow but interesting!
Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown and, in one month, he will be a man. But Prentisstown isn't like other towns. First, there are no women in Prentisstown - they all died years ago, when the aliens called Spackle released a germ that created Noise. And that's the second...
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Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown and, in one month, he will be a man. But Prentisstown isn't like other towns. First, there are no women in Prentisstown - they all died years ago, when the aliens called Spackle released a germ that created Noise. And that's the second thing... the Noise. Every one can hear everyone else's thoughts, from the tiniest squirrel to the loudest man. It's an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise that cannot be ignored. There is no quiet, no privacy, and no room for secrets.
Or is there? When Todd and his dog, Manchee, are exploring the swamp one day, they discover a pocket of silence, where there is no Noise. And the source of the quiet is a girl, something that Todd never expected to see. Todd does his best to keep the girl a secret from the rest of Prentisstown. But Todd isn't the only one keeping secrets - the men of the town have been hiding something from him, something about their past and the legacy that belongs to each boy that becomes a man there. Soon Todd finds himself running for his life, trying to escape a past he didn't know existed. But how can you run when those chasing you can hear your every thought?
The concept of Noise, of trying to keep your thoughts private or calm or layering them so that you can keep something to yourself, as really intriguing, and I liked the connection the author made between the way we're bombarded with all kinds of information today. The way Noise is expressed in the book is very powerful, and I would've liked to have seen that appear a bit more throughout. You also got a strong sense of the desperation that Todd and Viola must feel and the hopelessness of their journey, which can be a bit crushing to the reader... particularly when it comes to Chapter 31. I had a good cry at the end of
This book does have one of my all-time favorite openings: "The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. About anything." With such a great opening, it can feel like a bit of a slog to continue those first few chapters. However, this book is worth it!
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- adventure (by 1 person)
- alien (by 1 person)
- coming of age (by 1 person)
- dead parent (by 1 person)
- dogs (by 1 person)
- dystopia (by 1 person)
- fiction (by 1 person)
- futuristic (by 1 person)
- god (by 1 person)
- morality (by 1 person)
- 1 items are tagged withadventure
- 1 items are tagged withalien
- 1 items are tagged withcoming of age
- 1 items are tagged withdead parent
- 1 items are tagged withdogs
- 1 items are tagged withdystopia
- 1 items are tagged withfiction
- 1 items are tagged withfuturistic
- 1 items are tagged withgod
- 1 items are tagged withmorality
- 1 items are tagged withread
- 1 items are tagged withreligion
- 1 items are tagged withscience fiction
- 1 items are tagged withsetting doorway
- 1 items are tagged withstory doorway
- 1 items are tagged withsurvival
- 1 items are tagged withsuspense
- 1 items are tagged withteen
- 1 items are tagged withyoung adult
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- Social problems -- Juvenile fiction.
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- Human-animal relationships -- Juvenile fiction.
- Space colonies -- Juvenile fiction.
- Telepathy -- Juvenile fiction.
- Social problems -- Fiction.
- Telepathy -- Fiction.
- Human-animal communication -- Fiction.
- Space colonies -- Fiction.
- Science fiction.
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