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  1 More Than This
Author: Ness, Patrick
 
Click for Large Image
Class: Fiction
Age: 14-19
Language: English
LC: PZ7
Grade: 9-12
Print Run: 50000
ISBN-13: 9780763662585
LCCN: 2013943065
Imprint: Candlewick Press
Pub Date: 09/10/2013
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $19.99
  Hardcover
Physical Description: 472 pages ; 23 cm H 8.76", W 5.5", D 1.4", 1.3625 lbs.
LC Series:
Brodart Sources: Brodart's For Youth Interest: Popular
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Teen
Brodart's TOP Young Adult Titles
Brodart's YA Reads for Adults
Bibliographies: Booklist High-Demand Hot List
Nevada Young Readers' Award Nominees
Senior High Core Collection, 19th ed.
Senior High Core Collection, 20th ed.
Senior High Core Collection, 21st ed.
Senior High Core Collection, 22nd ed.
Texas Tayshas Reading List
Top 250 LGBTQ Books for Teens: Coming Out, Being Out, and the Search for Community
Young Adult Fiction Core Collection, 4th ed.
Awards: Best Fiction for Young Adults
Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices
Horn Book Guide Titles, Rated 1 - 4
Indies Choice/E.B. White Read-Aloud Book Award Winners and Honors
Kirkus Best Books
Kirkus Starred Reviews
Rainbow Book List
School Library Journal Best Books
School Library Journal Starred Reviews
VOYA's 5P Picks
VOYA's 5Q Picks
VOYA's Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror
Starred Reviews: Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal
TIPS Subjects: Science Fiction
Death and Dying
BISAC Subjects: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Social Themes / Suicide
YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Action & Adventure / Survival Stories
YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Dystopian
LC Subjects: Death, Fiction
Death, Juvenile fiction
England, Juvenile fiction
Families, Juvenile fiction
Memory, Fiction
Memory, Juvenile fiction
Survival, Juvenile fiction
Teenage boys, Juvenile fiction
Time travel, Fiction
Time travel, Juvenile fiction
Young adult fiction
SEARS Subjects: Death, Fiction
Memory, Fiction
Time travel, Fiction
Reading Programs: Accelerated Reader Level: 4.9 , Points: 15.0
Lexile Level: 800
Reading Counts Level: 6.3 , Points: 23.0
 
Annotations
Brodart's TOP Young Adult Titles | 09/01/2013
You never expect to wake up dead. When Seth wakes up after drowning, his memories filled with his breaking bones and smashing his head on the rocks, he wonders how he can be alive in a town that looks so much like the place he called home until a tragedy sent him and his family to America. 480pp.
Starred Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews | 09/01/2013
Seth, not yet 17, walks into the Pacific Ocean and ends his life. Or does he? He wakes, groggy, in front of the house in England where he spent his childhood, before his little brother, Owen, was kidnapped and the family moved to America. He spends days in a dust-covered, desolate landscape scavenging for food in empty stores, imagining that he's in a "hell built exactly for him." His dreams are filled with vivid memories of his life: his romance with a boy named Gudmund, a photo that's gone viral, and farther back, his inability to keep Owen safe. Seth is rescued by a girl named Regine and Tomasz, a younger, Polish boy, from pursuit by a silent, helmeted figure they call the Driver. Past and present collide as Seth struggles to determine what's real and what isn't, whether circumstances are all of his own doing. He faces doorways everywhere, with genuine death seemingly just beyond, but there are hints of something even more sinister going on. There are no easy answers either for Seth or readers. With a nod to Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ness brilliantly plays with contrasts: life and death, privacy and exposure, guilt and innocence. In characteristic style, the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy delves into the stuff of nightmares for an existential exploration of the human psyche. (Fiction. 14 & up). 480pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2013.
School Library Journal | 08/01/2013
Gr 9 Up. This haunting and consistently surprising novel raises deep questions about what it means to be alive, but it doesn't try to console readers with easy or pat answers. As the story opens, teenage Seth is experiencing his own death in painful detail. In the next chapter, he wakes up physically weak, covered in bandages and strange wounds, and wonders if he is in Hell or the future or somewhere else entirely. As he tries to survive in and make sense of his strange yet familiar surroundings, he is plagued by intense flashbacks of his life before he died: his guilt over the tragedy that befell his little brother, his burgeoning romance with another boy in his small town, and the events that led to his (dubious) death. Upon discovering two other young people in the blighted place he's landed, Seth begins to learn the Matrix-like truth about what has happened to the rest of humanity, how he can escape, and whether he even wants to. The intense themes in this novel make it more appropriate for older teens, but the language and sexual scenarios are clear, relevant, and neither graphic or gratuitous. A delicate balance between dystopian survival and philosophical grappling means that many different kinds of readers should appreciate the story. Kyle Lukoff, Corlears School, New York City. 480p. SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013.
Journal Reviews
BookPage | 09/01/2013
Ages 14-up. Seth drowns in a furious ocean, his body battered by freezing waves and sharp rocks. But as his consciousness gradually returns, he finds himself in a world that's both foreign and eerily familiar. It appears to be a long-abandoned version of his childhood hometown, the British village full of painful memories that his family left eight years ago to start a new life far away. Strangest of all, this alternate, desolate world seems to respond directly to Seth's thoughts, putting everything from supplies to companions in front of him just as he needs them. As Seth and two other mismatched teens band together to avoid a terrifying menace, all three are haunted by frighteningly realistic dreams of their previous lives. Issues of forbidden love, unwavering friendship, complex family dynamics, the difference between childhood and adulthood, violent abuse and teen suicide dovetail as the three survivors gradually figure out where they really are . . . and what they might be able to do about it. Artsy, creepy and full of psychological suspense, More Than This from Carnegie Medal-winning author Patrick Ness combines the science-fiction/thriller aspects of Robison Wells' Variant with the surreal, trauma-induced alternate realities of Andrew Smith's The Marbury Lens. As readers familiar with the Chaos Walking trilogy know, Ness specializes in writing post-apocalyptic worlds where things are rarely as they seem. When the truth--or what might be the truth--is finally revealed, the answers are both fitting and surprising. The dizzying ending brings the characters to the narrow edge between inevitable outcomes and hope for second chances--and challenges readers to form their own conclusions. Jill Ratzan. 480pg. BOOKPAGE, c2013.
Booklist | 08/01/2013
Grades 9-12. "He dies." So ends the first chapter of Ness' latest meld of genre fiction and soul-searching prose, wherein 16-year-old Seth violently drowns in the ocean. There is, of course, a catch: Seth wakes up in his former England home, suffering near-total amnesia and covered in metallic bandages. The neighborhood appears long deserted, and so Seth begins to scrounge empty stores for food and clothing. It's when he sleeps, however, that pieces of his past come rushing back: his culpability in the kidnapping of his little brother eight years earlier, his bespoiled sexual relationship with a boy from school, and even hints at how on earth he ended up here. Edging any further into plot is a minefield of spoilers, as the book's chief propulsion tactic is the turning of unexpected corners. Ness' knack for cliff-hangers, honed in the Chaos Walking series, remains strong, while the spare, gradual, anytime, anyplace quality of the story recalls A Monster Calls (2011). Repeated, similar battles with an antagonist feel like a distraction; nevertheless, Ness has crafted something stark and uncompromising. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Ness is in the midst of a major critical and commercial hot streak. An author tour and more will seek to extend it. Kraus, Daniel. 480p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2013.
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books | 10/01/2013
R. Gr. 9-12. A broken heart has led sixteen-year-old Seth to suicide, but ending his life doesn't necessarily put an end to his problems. After drowning himself off the coast of his Pacific Northwest home, Seth wakes up across the world in the small English town where he spent his childhood. To be returned to the scene of his greatest failure and his family's deepest grief surely indicates that he's in hell, and the charred, desolate landscape, without a soul in sight, is only further proof-in Seth's mind-that he has been sentenced to a doomed and painful afterlife. Even when he does finally encounter two other living people, he remains unconvinced by their explanations that his "death" was merely his waking up from a computer program and that the entire world-and essentially reality-has gone online. This complex, genre-bending book opens with Seth's violent drowning death at sea, described in such spare but devastating detail that readers may feel themselves gasping for a breath as Seth draws his last. The tone remains quietly but deeply unsettling throughout the first half, with flashbacks to both Seth's childhood mistake and his more recent relationship with his boyfriend often providing more questions that answers in regards to Seth's present situation. Several early hints point toward the Matrix-like premise that is introduced in the latter part, but Ness subverts familiar sci-fi/survival tropes and storytelling conventions, leaving readers with an ambiguous ending that is either incredibly frustrating or deliciously disturbing. The thematic explorations of the nature of reality and the afterlife offer some heady discussion fodder, while the nail-biting tension and high-stakes action sequences make this an easy sell to the legions of dystopia fans as well. KQG. 480p. THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIV. OF ILLINOIS, c2013.
Horn Book | 11/01/2013
High School. In the wake of The Lovely Bones, a subgenre of young adult novels was born wherein a dead protagonist moves on to the afterlife for the real action of the story, and Ness's latest novel fits neatly into this relatively recent tradition. What sets his apart is that the world-building, rather than becoming increasingly clearer, instead remains an enigma that puzzles and perplexes the characters--not to mention the reader. As the novel opens, Seth violently drowns in the ocean; he soon wakes up in a world like his own, but seemingly without people. Painful memories plague him: the abduction of his younger brother in the distant past and more recent ones of the fallout from his romantic relationship with another boy. He wanders for awhile--a long while--before he finds two other teens, Regine and Tomasz. Together, they dodge the mysteriously dangerous Driver while trying to make sense of their lives, their apparent deaths, and their current warped reality. Ness (the Chaos Walking trilogy; A Monster Calls, rev. 9/11) is not only a good storyteller but an interesting prose stylist, and his latest effort is as provocative as ever. Nevertheless, the gay subplot lacks satisfactory resolution, and the overwritten third-person present-tense narration makes the novel feel more important than it really is; consequently, the audience for this book narrows considerably from Ness's previous work. jonthan hunt. 472pg. THE HORN BOOK, c2013.
Horn Book Guide | 05/01/2014
3. As the novel opens, Seth drowns; he wakes up in a world like his own, but seemingly without people. He wanders until he finds two other teens and together they try to make sense of their lives, their apparent deaths, and their current warped reality. Ness is a good storyteller and an interesting prose stylist, but the world-building here is too enigmatic. jh. 472pg. THE HORN BOOK, c2014.
Publishers Weekly | 07/08/2013
Ages 14-up. Seth Wearing, age 16, dies in the opening pages of this complex, ambitious novel from Ness (A Monster Calls) and, arguably, that isn't the worst thing that happens to him. After drowning, Seth awakens in the suburban London neighborhood where he lived before his family relocated to the Pacific Northwest. The old neighborhood is now a dust-covered ruin; there is no noise, no electricity, and, at first, not another soul around. Is this hell? A tortured dream? Seth's search for understanding requires Ness to move between the unsettling present and Seth's past, slowly revealing his sad childhood, his awful mother, and the bright spot in his young life--his relationship with schoolmate Gudmund. When even that romance ended in sorrow, Seth grasped for a reason to live. The Matrix-like science fiction elements of the story are somewhat fuzzy, and even the characters continually question the logic of the circumstances they are stuck in. But Ness's exploration of big questions--specifically Seth's yearning to find out if life will ever offer more than the rotten hand he's been dealt--will provide solace for the right readers. (Sept.). 480p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2013.
~VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates Magazine - Retired Journal) | 10/01/2013
5Q 5P J S. Seth knows he is dead. He felt the life drain from his body. Why, then, is he awake in his former house in England? What are these weird bandages all over him? Why is there an inch of dust on everything? Where is everybody? Is he in Hell? Seth must survive in this strange world any way he can. He breaks into other houses and stores to find enough usable food to eat. There are no other people around him. He is plagued nightly with memories so vivid that he could swear they are real. He finally meets two other kids and they are on the run for their lives from an evil being known as the Driver. Together they try to find out if they are really dead, in Hell, or what. While in this world, readers catch glimpses of Seth's life before his death, his crazy mixed-up life. Ness leads readers on an adventure into a world that astounds and amazes. The plot twists and turns in many unexpected ways. The novel poses one mystery after another. Once a reader thinks it is all figured out, the reader is proven wrong. Ness captures the mind of a teenager perfectly. It is a fast-paced journey that even reluctant readers will pursue with some prodding. This book deals with death, love, homosexuality, suicide, guilt, and fear.--Barbara Allen. 480p. VOICE OF YOUTH ADVOCATES, c2013.
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