The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness

I know what a girl is. Course I do. I seen ‘em in the Noise of their fathers in town, mourned like their wives but not nearly so often.

In Prentisstown, where 14 year-old Todd Hewitt lives, everybody can hear the inner thoughts, or ‘the noise’, of everyone else. There are no women in the village. It is understood that all have died as a result of a disease that has swept the earth. There is something malevolent about Prentisstown that is not just to do with the absence of women, but something abject and abandoned.

There are things about this world that are not clear or complete, leaving room in future books for more details to be revealed. Some writers would probably want to paint in all that background in order to build the world for the reader. But Knife has a rough, improvised feel that well matches the world Todd inhabits – and the cracking story that is unleashed when he finally makes good his escape. And here Todd encounters something else unexpected: a girl.

The Knife of Never Letting Go is longlisted for the Silver Inky.