An Evening with Patrick Ness

‘Nobody can tell you how to write, they can only tell you how they write’ was the opening gambit given by Patrick Ness at Waterstone’s Piccadilly when asked about how he finds the material he uses for his books. Indeed after hearing him talk, you can be sure that Ness can’t be given advice easily, for here is an author who knows his own mind and what he wants he wants to do with it in the form of words. Ness’s gift is that he isn’t afraid to tell the stories that teenagers want to hear; dark, with a mixture of despair and hope and although this leaning towards a darker side has attracted criticism in the past, he must be doing something right to have been awarded the prestigious Carnegie medal twice, amongst other numerous accolades. He is a firm believer that children will edit their own reading choices and that they will ‘self-select’ what is appropriate, putting down a book that is either not appropriate, or irrelevant to their world.

Patrick Ness is here to talk about his latest book ‘ More Than this’. He admits there is a great difficulty in talking about the book without revealing spoilers, but we are told this is a book featuring a gay teenager, Seth, who wakes up after his death to find he is by himself in the world (‘an appealing fantasy’ Ness states). From reading the book ourselves, we can tell you without giving too much away that the story unravels beautifully in the form of flashbacks alongside an exploration of the dystopian world in which Seth finds himself.

Reflecting on his own upbringing, (living in a small town with Methodist parents), Ness speaks plainly about the need to escape; ‘More Than This’ works on this theme – the need to flee a small minded community, or to explore the idea of having to hide part of your life from your parents for fear of not being understood, or confront your own identity. When asked how it was he could still connect with teenagers, Ness spoke plainly about how some people ‘forcibly forget what it is like to be a teenager’ distinguishing how all consuming any issue can be at this age, and vitally, how at this age, you can feel alone and disparate to anyone else. Essentially this is part of growing up – we all think we’re different.

Having devoured and adored the Carnegie winning ‘A Monster calls’ previously with our own book group, it is clear that character development is a strength of all his books as then we felt we had been on an emotional rollercoaster with the main character, Conor and similarly you cannot help but empathise with the character of Seth throughout the book. (at one point I realised I had been clenching my fists for a whole chapter). Another forte of his writing is a clever use of metaphor, and when questioned about whether there was any content children were too young to grasp, he spoke of how many children’s books use metaphors to deal with serious issues, such as ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, which he believes is an allegory for depression. This put us in mind to ask Patrick whether he would ever consider collaborating with an illustrator again (he worked with Jim Kay on A Monster Calls) to create either a picture book, or another illustrated novel, to which he replied that he would never rule anything out, although he said good picture books are harder to create than what people thought – a very wise answer!

We left the evening with bellies full of book inspired cake (and a glass or two of fizz) having felt we had been entertained by a true wordsmith, who gave us some moments to reflect upon our own scrapes and escapes and the teenagers we once were. However meeting the confident Mr Ness now, it is hard to believe he has never known exactly what direction he is going in – as in his own words, he always knows his last line.