The Rest of Us Just Live Here

All the characters here are broken. And thus, interesting. But this is not a fantasy novel. This is a standard YA novel with real-life problems. Non-real elements are minor and don't affect the plot.

Something's going on in the background of said plot. Something "Harry Potter" or "Buffy" involving a Big Bad and Apocalypses. But that's not what the story is about. This is about the extras that end up in the B-roll, when the cameras pan over the ambulances. Who are those people?

One is gay. One is going to a war-torn third world country after graduation. One is a recovering anorexic. And one (the main character) has a compulsion disorder. There is magic in the world, but no one is using it. No one wants to. They've seen what happens to the show more kids who do. They're stressing about college, graduation, dating, whether he-likes-her-but-does-she-like-me. It's nice to see a deconstruction of the hero's journey, but hard to do well. This one does. The style reminds me of John Green writing a Harry Potter background character or A.S. King ("Please Ignore Vera Dietz"). show less

Think of an episode of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ taking place, with creatures blowing up the high school, people being killed, and strange things happening. Now think about the people who are living with these events, but aren’t part of the Scooby Gang, people who aren’t in on the secret events, people who don’t have special powers to save the world. This book is about those people. Sounds boring? It’s not.

Mike Mitchell is our narrator. He has OCD, and is in love with his best female friend, Henna, but she doesn’t know it. Or doesn’t admit to knowing it. His sister, Mel, had anorexia but is in recovery. Their kid sister, Meredith is possibly a genius. Their father is a fairly useless drunk, with basically no show more involvement in the family, while their mother is a politician, who seems to regard her family as a political asset or liability. She’s extremely unlikeable. Mike’s best friend is Jared, who is gay, and just happens to be the grandson of the Goddess of Cats. This makes him very attractive to cats, including mountain lions, and gives him the ability to heal others. He’s the odd man in this circle of friends; he has superpowers, but isn’t involved in the supernatural crisis. He’s considered a normal kid. That bit seems pretty strange.

Every chapter starts with a few lines about what the super friends- the indie kids, as they are called- are up to with the aliens/demons/whatever. Mike and his friends aren’t even interested in what’s happening on that front. Mike hits a zombie deer with his car, and while it seems odd, he’s not really concerned about the fact that the deer is a zombie. All he wants to do is go to the prom with Henna, and graduate without the school getting turned into a hellmouth or something.

The story amused me. On the cover we see a bunch of teenagers, the four in color being Mike & Co, while in monochrome are a girl with a stake, a kid with a wand and cloak, someone with a bow & arrow, someone sparkly, and a lot of others- the people from all the supernatural YA books, movies, and TV shows. They are in the background, while the normal kids are the focus. The story is totally character driven, and the kids really come alive. Mike annoyed me at times with his neediness, but that is a part of his anxiety complex that drives his OCD. I understand that. I have OCD, too, and it was nice to see it accurately portrayed. I don’t know if the author’s other work has the dry humor this one does, but I’ll be reading some to find out. show less

A really fun, wry, original take on the teenage fantasy novel - focusing not on the Heroes but on the ordinary kids off to the side. I saw a review on Goodreads that showed a screenshot of a Buffy episode and had circled some background actors and, yep, those kids are the stars here. (Well, mostly.) But Ness has a big heart and a willingness to show teenagers in all their messy glory and so the book succeeds not only on a quirk level but on a just-good-story level. We're in a golden age of writing for younger audiences and it seems that Mr. Ness is absolutely at the top of that game right now. I look forward to diving into his back catalog with all speed.

More at RB on Weds: show more target="_top">http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2015/06/24/the-rest-of-us-just-live-here/ show less

What a pleasant surprise this, my first Patrick Ness book, turned out to be.

"The Rest Of Us Just Live Here" made it onto my TBR pile on the basis of a publisher's summary that pitched it as a fun YA novel looking at the people who went to the same Highschool as the kids who stop the hellmouth from opening or end the zombie plague or whatever this year's route to the apocalypse is but who are more concerned with making it to graduation and taking the person of their dreams to the Prom.

It actually does cover all that stuff, but where I'd expected something light, quirky and insouciant, filled within in jokes and Urban Fantasy references, I got something that went much deeper than that, getting beneath the skin of what it means to be at show more that point in your life where you're not yet independent, not entirely sure of who you are, not understood by your parents, understand your parents too well to expect much from them and where the most important people in your life are the friends you've chosen and your sister because, well, you're all the family either of you really have.



The conceit the book is built on is a lot of fun. Each chapter starts with a short summary of what the chapter would be about if it was a conventional YA Urban Fantasy novel. Here's the one that opens the book:



"Chapter The First in which the Messenger of the Immortals arrives in a surprising shape, looking for a permanent vessel and, after being chased by her through the woods, Indykid Finn meets his final fate"



After that kind of summary, the focus moves on to four friends and the things that they're doing while the Indykids, who all have names like Finn or Satchel, fight and sometimes die trying to save the world.


The story is told from the point of view of Mikey, a boy who is about to graduate high school, who is best friends with a kind and charismatic guy who has a couple of secrets that set him apart but which serve to enhance his charisma and kindness by adding in a charming humility, Henna who Mikie loves but can't work up the courage to tell her so, and Mikie's sister, Mel, who is a year older than him but is repeating a year and so will graduate at the same time and who is also best friends with Henna.


What I loved most about this book was that it avoided the clichés around coming of age and presented young people I could believe in and root for and parents I could recognise and flinch at without demonising them. Mikey's a nice guy but he gets jealous and snarky and sulks sometimes and doesn't always know why he feels the way he does or does the things he does. His relationship with his sister, how he helps her with her problems and how she helps him, was touching and credible.


As the Indykid's apocalypse unfolds, the four friends are directly affected and it turns out that at least one of them could have been in the Indykid set. The friends are also affected by what their parents are up to, two of whom are local politicians, running in opposition to one another in an election. The Indykids and the adults provide an environment over which the four friends have no control but the centre of the story remains the relationship they have with each other and the choices that they make.


I found myself completely immersed in the lives of these people and caring what happened to them. I never felt that my emotions where being manipulated to get a stock response. I felt as if i was being invited to look closely and really let myself see what was going on. To set aside the threat of the end of the world and the aggression and spin of local politics and look at four young people trying to live their lives well, even when nothing is going right.


I'll be back for more Patrick Ness.


I recommend the audiobook version of "The Rest Of Us Just Live Here" which is performed perfectly by James Fouhey. Click on the SoundCloud link to hear a sample.


https://soundcloud.com/harperaudio_us/restofusjustlivehere_ness show less

In a world where terrible and extraordinary things happen on a fairly regular basis, Mikey and his friends are perfectly normal (well, mostly). While kids with names like Kerouac and Satchel are saving the world from invaders from another dimension, Mikey and his friends just want to make it to graduation. Of course, being perfectly normal doesn’t protect you from becoming collateral damage when weird things start to happen...

This book was a lot of fun to read. It takes on the tropes of the genre in a tongue-in-cheek way (my favorite line was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Fault in Our Stars reference about the time, a few years ago, when all of the special kids were beautifully dying of cancer). Perfect for the reader who has read one show more too many books about very special teenagers saving the world. show less

Ohh, this book hit home on so many levels. I don't think there's a Patrick Ness book I haven't cried while reading yet . . . and to think I thought this was a comedy beforehand! Yeah, it's not a comedy, in case you thought it was. At all.

Book content warnings:
alcoholism
eating disorders
suicide ideation

The Rest of Us Just Live Here takes place in the middle of nowhere, in a place a lot like most small towns, with one restaurant, a high school, lots of trees, etc. But the "indie kids" there (or hipsters as I know them in my own little middle of nowhere) tend to be part of something bigger: what you'd think would be the plotline of the next big-trending fantasy. The main character, Mikey, is definitely not an indie kid, and that big ol' show more plotline is not for him. Instead, he and his friends are simply inhabitants of the same town those "main characters" live in. And, well, this is their story.

The result is some mixed realistic/coming-of-age and fantasy genre that ends up blending really well, surprisingly.

Patrick Ness really knows how to nail characterization - and show character in a few words. It took to about page 17 for me to fall head over heals for all the main 4 protagonists, and they're all so real it's terrifying. (I mean, maybe it's partly because they're diverse and actually have mental illnesses/struggles with body issues/etc. but I don't need to go into that further.)

The writing is even stronger when it comes to family dynamics. Even the supposedly "bad" parents are more layered and complicated than I thought at first. Right when I make up my mind about someone I'm finding my belief challenged.

I'm a little disappointed at the fatphobia (even if it was just a 1-sentence line - maybe my standards are set a little high for Patrick Ness). It could be the character, not the author, of course! But it's hard to know when that line (in the character's thoughts) aren't challenged at all.

Okay, so I lied when I said I was done talking about the importance of writing diverse characters. Because Mikey's personal story has helped me come to some realizations about myself.

Mikey has OCD and anxiety, and when the anxiety gets worse, so does the OCD. Okay, so there's some novels that have MC's with OCD, but the way Mikey's thoughts and patterns are written is all too relatable. I don't have OCD, but a bfrb (body-focused repetitive behavior), specifically dermatillomania (skin picking disorder). There are passages that I need to stop reading because I'm literally sobbing. The way Mikey can't stop doing something, even when it's causing him pain. It's all written in a way that it's hard not to relate to and feel validated if you struggle with something similar. Mikey eventually goes to therapy for his problem, and goes on meds. (The conversation with his therapist--the entire thing--is the realest thing I've ever read. The discussion about "if I go on medication, does that mean I've failed?", the talk about being messed up, etc.) So, yeah, I think I need help, too. I'll probably bring this book with me. Moral support, you know.

I was going to talk about something else, too, but that's a bit spoilery for the book and a bit personal for me. So nah, not today.

In the end, the book reached out and pretty much grabbed my heart. It would be difficult for me to give it anything but five stars. (I've also forced it onto friends, so . . . ) show less

I went into this book thinking it would be about the sidekicks, but it was even better: it's about the people on the periphery of the big action-packed fantasy adventure, like Bella's classmates in Twilight (who have the distinction of being the only cast of incidental characters I was way more interested in than the main characters). Each chapter opens with a short paragraph summarizing the BIG EXCITING ADVENTURE happening to the "special", "chosen" kids at high school (hipsters and Bellas all) before giving way to an otherwise ordinary story about four ordinary kids wrapping up their senior year.

The ordinariness is actually what caught me off guard. I guess I was expecting that the four main characters would turn out to be "special" show more in their own right, caught up in the middle of the big finale. Instead the book is very down-to-earth. I appreciated that the characters all had real problems to deal with--Mikey's OCD, Mel's anorexia, Jared's sexual orientation and (ahem) special family members, and Henna's conflict with her parents. These teens are not just miserable because they don't feel understood. If anything, they sometimes feel TOO understood.

Ness really handles his characters well. Not everyone is redeemed at the end, there is no one big happily-ever-after (though of course the "chosen one" hero always wins!), but you know that everything is going to be all right. No one's toughing it out on their own for stupid reasons. Not everyone is perfectly, romantically paired off for life at the end of high school. Mikey's getting help--and when have I EVER seen a teenage character not only ask for the therapy they need but have it along with medication and find that, together, they work? This really meant a lot to me, since so many books seem to treat mental illness as an all-or-nothing, all-in-your-head, all-a-matter-of-attitude thing. His chapter with his therapist was honestly more helpful than my own sessions with a therapist have been.

I really cared about these characters, even when they were doing stupid things. I liked the variety of things that happened in such a short book without the plot ever feeling too crowded. I REALLY liked the layout, having the epic story explained quickly at the beginning of the chapter so we can see where the epic sometimes touches the ordinary.

While I didn't quite understand why adults seemed to ignore all the weird things happening around the indie kids (how do the new generations hear about past indie kid incidents? why isn't there a campaign to give kids only boring names?), I still think the concept was well-constructed. Our characters know something is going on, but not the details. It affects them, but not entirely: it's not their story, so as long as they're smart, they're not its victims.

So my one complaint--because I always have a complaint, don't I?--is that this book seems to have a marketing problem. The book's written for older teenagers: there's drinking and drugs and violence and tough real-world medical issues and truly dysfunctional families and a whole lot of people dying in the periphery. But the cover design, catchy blurb, jacket description (on the ARC I have), and font size all scream "preteen." If not "upper elementary." Given the font size, I think the problem here is that publishers don't think young adults will be interested in short books--and they can't charge as much for a book less than three hundred pages. But in stretching the text physically for those reasons, the book looks like something it is not--and I am the first person who will insist that you absolutely do judge a book by its cover, and copy, and formatting.

But that's all the publisher's fault, not the author's. I'm a firm believer that authors shouldn't be pushed to write more of a story than needs to be told. And I think Ness did a fine job with this one, and I hope he doesn't write a sequel. Though I wouldn't say no to, say, a story set in a city instead of the middle of nowhere. show less