I thought The Knife of Never Letting Go was a good book. The plot was really gripping, and the character of Tom was really well described. The character of Viola, as she slowly opened up during the story and her relationship with Tom, was really interesting to read about. This book would be a fantastic book – if it weren’t for the style of writing. It is really difficult to read. At the beginning, the reader gets his, or her first shock – a whole page filled entirely with ‘Noise’ – the noise of people’s thoughts. It is so confusing and hard to read, it makes your head spin – then again, maybe it is not meant to be comprehensible. Noise plays a big part in the story, and its effects, and the ‘Noise’ of some characters is very entertaining, especially the dog, Manchee. In this book, not only do animals have Noise, they can also talk. A lot of them don’t have much to say. Especially dogs, which makes Manchee’s thoughts still interesting, if brief. It gets easier to read, but not by much. The story is written in the first person, which gives a better impression of the character’s feelings, but the main character keeps interjecting  with his own thoughts, telling himself to shut up when he thinks thoughts about being afraid or having feelings for Viola. It makes the book immensely difficult to read. It is worst at the end, during a frantic climax. It keeps on-
Keeps on-
Keeps on-
Repeating things and starting a new line-
Repeating things and starting a new line-
Just when you really want to keep reading a constant stream of words. It is a confident piece of writing, just to write like that, and certainly a risk, which I don’t think paid off. The plot has lots of twists as well, which are really difficult to grasp when-
A new line keeps starting-
Just a massive twist occurs-
It also makes liberal use of words such as ‘thru’ and ‘preparayshuns’ and ‘cuz’, which only makes it even more difficult to read, but gives the impression that the author cna’t spel. The main character doesn’t use very good grammar neither. I know this gives the impression of looking into a person’s thoughts more accurately, but surely it could use more coherent grammar. How can this book be accepted by librarians, when the writing is in the style of someone who never listens in English?! I’m still going to buy the sequel, because the plot is gripping and the cliff-hanger at the end is fantastic, but it is too difficult to read to win, in my view. 9/10 – if it changes to conventional prose. Otherwise, 5.