Chaos
Walking is
the title of a Patrick Ness
trilogy. So far it
has won the Carnegie Medal, The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, The
Booktrust Teenage Prize and the Costa Children’s Book Award. It may yet win an Oscar or two, because
there are firm plans to film it.
I have been reading the trilogy, and I am
very impressed by their great
literary and moral qualities.
They do what all good literature does; allowing the reader to stand in someone else’s shoes for a
while, and to become more human by doing so. Such books are empathy creators. Chaos Walking is set on a planet colonized by Christian farmers twenty three
years previously. Todd, a thirteen year old boy, has been taught that during a war with
the native Spackle species, germs
were released by the Spackle that
killed all the women, and caused every man’s thoughts to be broadcast as the Noise. Todd discovers that this is not
the whole truth. On the run he
meets Viola, another teenager, the sole survivor of a crashed scout ship sent
in advance of the next colonialist’s mother ship.
Todd narrates the opening chapters, but once he
meets Viola their narrative voices alternate. Herein lies the genius of the books. Patrick Ness has found
authentic voices for each of them,
as they struggle against ruthless pursuers, captors, betrayers,
separation and the ways in which their trust of each other is tested. This is a hard story, the kind
young adults need to help them face adult reality, just as younger children
need authentic – and therefore frightening – fairy stories to help them face
and manage their own fears.
Todd and Viola are exposed to the worst aspects of human nature, the impulses that lead us to terrorism,
torture and genocide. They
also become impressive role models, especially Viola, who is not the kind of girl to scream and run,
but uses her intelligence, tenacity and courage in truly heroic ways.
Despite the enormous differences between the settings, genre
and language Ness’s books remind me of Charles Dickens’. Dickens also created young
sympathetic characters who encounter human monsters and suffer appalling
deprivation and sickening
betrayal.
I am not
only impressed by these books, but by the young people who read them. I remember being amazed that so many young people read and enjoyed Philip
Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy. These are also enormously
demanding books, making no compromises in terms of language (Pullman is happy
to use a wide vocabulary and complex – if wonderfully constructed – sentences)
or emotional and spiritual depth.
Not only can young people cope with ‘long form’ literature, they can
cope with – and really enjoy books of the highest literary values. When I attended the National
Theatre’s two part adaptation of His Dark Materials the auditorium was
packed with teenage girls, many of them young teenagers, who had dragged their
parents along. The two three hour
plays ran for a year.
Now Lionsgate are planning to film Chaos
Walking.
Robert Zemekis is expected to direct and Charlie Kaufmann is reportedly
writing the script.
Robert Zemekis has directed
Back to the Future I, II and III, Contact, Beowulf, Who
Framed Roger Rabbit, Castaway, Forrest Gump, and
the recent Flight. Charlie Kaufmann has scripted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovitch. Translating a
narrative voice onto the screen is difficult, especially when the very personal
nature of that voice is crucial.
Chaos Walking is Todd and Viola’s story;
as told by Todd and Viola.
To recreate this on screen we need the ‘tell’ as well as the
‘show’. But Kaufmann is a
daringly original scriptwriter, and Zemekis has a great capacity to stretch the
limits of film. So it lookss like
a good combination.
Yet another trilogy? Yes, but. I know we seem to be
inundated by them, sometimes as separate novels linked by
location or theme, sometimes as seemingly never ending sagas, or a soap operas,
and sometimes as one story padded out to sell three books instead of one. Many of these are of low literary
quality, and seem designed to get lazy readers hooked to read book after
book. Relatively few stories
justifies three volumes. The
Lord of the Rings
is the classic exemption , joined by Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Malorie Blackmans’s Noughts and Crosses and now The Hunger Games. I choose to exclude The Twilight Trilogy and Fifty Shades from consideration, having
neither read the books nor seen the films.
Many trilogies and series are aimed at teenagers and young
adults (I am not sure quite when teenagers becomes a young adults). Their popularity gives the
lie to the suggestion – often quoted as a fact – that young readers cannot cope
with the ‘long form’ read. Of course,
along with adults they like the familiarity provided by a series of
books/films/TV shows that share the same settings and characters. If these characters seem to
‘grow up’ alongside their audiences they can enjoy the loyalty engendered by
the TV soup operas and the Harry Potter
series.
