Release

It’s Saturday, it’s summer and, although he doesn’t know it yet, everything in Adam Thorne’s life is going to fall apart. Relationships will change, he’ll change, but maybe, just maybe, he’ll find freedom in the release.

Time is running out though, because way across town a ghost has risen from the lake. Searching, yearning, she leaves a trail of destruction in her wake…

Release by Patrick Ness is a sucker punch of a novel; (as per usual for Patrick. Why do I pay him to do this to me every two years?) a story that navigates coming out, bad boyfriends, worse families and drastic change. Though I am not (spoiler alert) a gay teenage boy on the cusp of coming out to my conservative Christian family, I connected deeply with the feelings expressed in this book, which is very much concerned with the wounds inflicted on us in our childhood and how they impact the person we grow up to be.

Release, if you didn’t know, is kind of an homage to Mrs Dalloway, so takes place over a 24 hour period with a narrative that is heavy on the flashbacks. Adam is dealing not only with the fact of his family – his father is the preacher at their local church and his whole family very conservative and homophobic – but also with a recent break up. His ex, Enzo, decided he was straight over the summer and treats Adam as if nothing ever happened between them while dating a girl that looks exactly like him.

Enzo is the worst. I kind of wanted to feel bad for him because his actions are obviously the result of an intolerant and heteronormative society… but he was just too much of an a-hole.

As in Mrs Dalloway, the novel has a split narrative, with Adam’s story interspersed with another separate but interconnected sequence of events. While Adam struggles, a girl in the community recently murdered by her drug addict boyfriend is possessed by a spirit from another world, and wanders the town seeking to avenge her own murder. It’s reminiscent of The Rest of us Just Live Here, but with a much more developed (and much sadder) plot.

While all of Patrick Ness’ books are emotional (the death of Manchee will haunt me forever THANKS PATRICK), with his past few novels it’s as if he’s moved from these grand, dramatic narratives (Chaos Walking, A Monster Calls) to smaller stories filled with emotional truths. Rather than deal with death and destruction (which, don’t get me wrong, he does exceptionally well), these days he writes novels filled with more ‘mundane’ concerns. The Rest of Us Just Live Here, for example, was the book about insecurity I wish existed when I was 17 (that whole I’m the only unnecessary member of the friend group thing? I got to the age of 22 thinking I was the only one who’d ever felt that way). Release is about the difficulty of recognising the good in your life – and accepting it, which in Adam’s case came in the form of Linus, probably my favourite love interest of the year so far (any real life Linuses out there who are into women… call me?) – when your whole life the people who are supposed to have loved and supported you have instead torn you down, bullied you, and made you feel like you’re all wrong.

Ness artfully uses the supernatural narrative – in which the world might end – to emphasise the importance of living your truth now. The day Adam decides to be himself no matter the consequences – certain rejection by his family – is a day when, unbeknownst to him, the world might end. The idea of now or never takes on an urgent significance without Adam even knowing it. Yes, it’s kind of a cheesy idea, but as Adam says, “sometimes you just got to eat the corn and enjoy it.”

Release is a beautiful and heart-rending novel from an author who never fails to surprise and challenge me. I hope everybody reads it.