More Than This by Patrick Ness

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a strange book. The premise is strange, the characters are strange, the setting is strange. The protagonist Seth is driven to suicide because of the circulation of what seems like a relatively innocent ‘selfie’ but finds that after death he is transported from America back to the England of his early childhood, and nothing is what it seems to be. There is a parallel world in which he is at first alone but then meets two others, as strange in their own ways as he is. We are told the story of his life in England and the crisis that pushed the family to move halfway round the world to America. And there we are told the story of his love for another boy although the depth of this relationship is never really explained – love yes but did it go further?
But as the situation in this life after death world worsens by the day, where the group are apparently hunted by forces that would return them to a living death, we start to wonder which world is real and which is not. Does this ‘world’ extend beyond one town in England? Is the same thing happening all over the world? Would the pursuing forces not send reinforcements?
But I read it to the end if only to find the answers. Seth wanted those too. We are never told and as Seth seeks to resolve this, the story just stops. Oh.





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