The Knife of Never Letting Go

The Knife of Never Letting Go is a young adult science fiction novel by the British American writer Patrick Ness, published by Walker Books in 2008. It is the first book of the Chaos Walking series, followed by The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men.

Todd Hewitt is twelve years old and the only boy in Prentisstown, a settlement on a planet where a germ left the surviving men with their thoughts permanently audible to one another. The effect is not something a person can switch off, so a low background of Noise runs under every conversation and the animals Todd passes have voices of their own. He is a month away from the birthday that would make him a man when he has to leave the town, and on the road he meets a girl whose silence is the one thing the world around him has never produced.

Ness writes Todd's narration in a voice that drops letters and repeats words, so the way the character reads and thinks is visible in the prose itself. This was his first book for teenagers, and the series later widens the story well beyond Prentisstown.