The Rest Of Us Just Live Here

Have you ever watched an action scene in a film where all the extras are running away in terror, and a lot of them get hurt, and for a minute you wonder whether or not they're going to be OK, but you never find out? This book is about those people. The basic idea here is that there's this big, clichéd YA novel going on (which the chapter headings are the chapter heading for, explaining that story) whereas the bulk of the book focuses on Mikey, just an ordinary guy trying to live an ordinary life while the "indie kids" are trying to stop an invasion.

But the thing is, it's not just about how the lives of the indie kids affect Mikey, not at all. His problems are real. For example, he suffers with OCD (real OCD, not "I'm a bit OCD" OCD) and he's about to leave his home town to go to college. By juxtaposing these real, emotional problems next to the exaggerated problems of the indie kids, Ness highlights how important and enormous anxiety is as well as the general worries of growing up, of being a teenager.

Now, if you know me, you know I've long been a fan of Patrick Ness (I think fan might be a bit of an understatement actually, but I digress) so it's hard for me not to compare it to his other books (which you should all definitely read). So I will say this - this is a very different read to "More Than This", his previous YA novel. Instead of big ideas and philosophy, this book shows the importance of real-life worries and how they are the real issues that YA novels are dealing with when they portray an exploding school or a tyrannical regime. This book is also a lot funnier (with Ness poking fun at YA traditions) and in places more "light" or even light-hearted, but seriousness does have its place here and is, perhaps, what makes this book's point. And while I would say that it's not his best, it comes pretty close indeed. I have never felt more emotionally attached to any characters in any book ever and the narrative sparkles with a wit and realism I've not really ever experienced in a book. I think this book also showed me how Patrick Ness succeeds where John Green fails - his characters are meaningful and likeable and always flawed in realistic ways just like a Green character isn't. They say meaningful things without sounding like 30-something pretentious novelists. That said, there are the occasional few lines where I was wondering "would anyone really say that?" but then I thought, perhaps here, in this situation, someone actually might.

This book looks at, in a world of "Chosen One"s, the boy who feels like he could never be chosen, like he's the least needed. And it's so beautifully, sensitively, cleverly and originally written that it works on every level in every way. At times when the storyline could go into "everything's resolved as if by magic mode" or is heading towards predictability Patrick Ness makes a point of changing the direction. It's a fresh, exciting, daring and brilliant novel that will probably become one of Patrick Ness' most popular books. Talking about it just won't do it justice. You just need to read it.

10/10