posted on 04 Oct 2015

The Rest Of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

Here we have another great book from a master of Young Adult fiction. This time he is writing about a group of 'ordinary' small town American teenagers who are preparing to leave High School and leave home for college. What makes this common experience distinctive is the disturbing influence of those described as the   'indie kids' who have links to the powerful force of the Immortals. This means that the transition is far from ordinary for 'the rest of us ( who) just live here'.

This story is often scary stuff involving violence and death but set against a landscape of everyday life. This threat to security is by no means a new problem for the local community as it transpires that there are often mysterious and dangerous events bubbling beneath the surface at this time of year. Indeed we learn that there have been past battles against the undead in the woods and also vampire wars plus an incident where the high school was blown up. As such, everyone in the town has been touched by the regular mayhem and so is understandably extra cautious around the end of the school year.

On the other hand, the adults hand over most of the responsibility to the current generation of school leavers, perhaps because they have had to cope with various horrors in their own past. Pupils seem to disappear on a fairly regular basis and no great fuss is made, it seems to be part of the acknowledged indie kids 'problem'.

This is a powerful novel about adolescence as a rite of passage that includes all the usual anxieties about friendship and love made more compelling because of the real zombie events that are taking place. Written in the first person voice of Mikey, a sensitive self-deprecating  young man who is trying to wrestle with emerging romantic feelings for his lifelong friend, Henna. We also learn about his feelings for his grandmother who has advanced Alzheimer’s and lives in a care home. He makes the wry observation that this disease is not at all 'kooky' as sometimes represented in film, but one that continues to devastate the life of all the family. One of Mikey's close friends is a half god, with very useful healing powers but which means that he is required to disappear mysteriously on frequent occasions. Despite his evident oddness, he is accepted by his peer group because they have always known him and his father (  his mother, a full goddess, unable to live with mortals has been long gone).

Not so with the indie kids - presumably the author is trying to tell the reader something about the enduring power of idealism and how it is perceived as being dangerous to mainstream society. The indie kids mentioned have names like Finn, Dylan, Kerouac and Satchel, which of course have cultural associations for the older reader although I'm not sure if the same would be said for younger readers. The outsider Nathan, who has arrived to join the school five weeks before the end of his senior year is perceived as having a name that 'could go either way'. Despite being a personable character, he has to prove his worth to the suspicious Mikey. We learn about his back story as a teenager growing up in Florida, one that has been affected by vampires and death, so he is no stranger to unexplained phenomena.

My copy is a beautifully presented limited edition with vivid yellow edging and includes an exclusive print of the book cover which hints at the explosive nature of the content. There are echoes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer here with all its energetic comic book shenanigans, very graphic with a humorous edge beneath the tragic events. However it is much more than this as it is a deftly crafted novel with complex characters and big themes - read and enjoy.

Karen Argent

October 2015