Patrick Ness: Award-winning writer to attend New Zealand festivals

For more than 20 years, Patrick Ness has captivated teen readers with “very dark” novels like A Monster Calls And Chaos is coming.

IN Lizard Chronicles Nobody – his new book for children aged 8 to 11 – the award-winning young writer leans firmly towards absurdist comedy with the story of a monitor lizard who becomes the caretaker of the hall.

“Just discovering all the emotional colors you can paint in the absurd, what a joy. As a child, I loved the absurd, and I loved it when I laughed unexpectedly when I was excited.”

Patrick Ness is visiting New Zealand this month to attend the Verb Readers and Writers Festival and the Auckland Writers Festival. He will be in Wellington on November 8 and 10 and in Auckland on November 12.

For a long time, Ness thought his story about Zeke the monitor lizard was “too funny” to be written into a book, but he couldn’t stop coming up with comedic moments from his life that kids might enjoy.

“Be fun and crazy, but also do tender things” was the secret to writing for a younger audience, he realized.

Grief and bullying appeared in Lizard Chronicles Nobody because for many children they were a fact of life, Ness said.

“When I was a child, I didn’t like books that told of a world I couldn’t recognize, a world free of these things. I liked being told the truth, even if the truth was sometimes difficult.

“I love him (Zeke) very much and I just want to tell him the truth. I want to acknowledge that he has a burden, and I want to acknowledge that things aren’t always that simple… I’m thinking, damn if I can fit it all in, and it feels like a very, very rich drink to me.”

“If Wes Anderson wrote a middle grade story,” is what Ness gave illustrator Tim Wilson to bring Zeke’s story to life.

He chose Wilson for the “completely deadpan” look he gave the young lizard.

“There’s so much expression in two little circles and two little dots… and to me it’s just a miracle.

“When collaboration works best… together we do something better than most of both of us. And I’m comfortable with my ego at this level. I’m happy when someone brings great things to my book… do it better and better. I really, really enjoy seeing what illustrators bring to life from my words. What a pleasure.”

As a reader, Ness only gives a book 40 or 50 pages before deciding whether to give it up or not.

“I have enough arrogance to think that if I’m not interested by then, it’s the book’s fault or something.”

“There are so many books in the world that we should never waste time reading boring ones,” he said.

“I never want to write a boring book. I never want to read a boring book. There are so many of them. Read what you love. This shouldn’t be a chore. This shouldn’t be a test. I mean, you can read testing things, and you can challenge things, and you can read difficult books. But there must always be a level… there must be a level of joy.

“I’m reading now Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, which is 950-plus pages dedicated to a possible messiah in 1700s Poland. I don’t have a frame of reference for any of this, but it’s fun, it’s long, it’s challenging, and it’s things I’m not familiar with. I insist because it’s amazing. If you don’t enjoy the book, put it down.”

Ness himself was less than impressed with another famous Children’s Chronicle – the 1950s Narnia series – because writer K.S. Lewis didn’t understand childhood, he said.

“At some point, all children become kings and queens and live the full lives of kings and queens, and then come back through the wardrobe and forget it all.

According to Ness, Lewis viewed childhood “as a pleasant pastime which we must then forget and put aside.”

“I think he is completely wrong. He is completely wrong to say that the things that happen to us when we are young are just as important as the things that happen to us when we become adults.

“Is what happens on the day of an eight-year-old or a 14-year-old as important as what happens on the day of a 41-year-old?

“They are living right now. And a child’s daily experience is valuable, worth appreciating and studying.”

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