The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick
Ness
Published by Walker Books, 2015
Mikey, and his group of close friends are about to
graduate from high school and begin college, when things start to get
weird in their small town. Just ordinary teenagers, they are muddling
through their own ordinary problems, too busy to wonder about a lot
of extraordinary events happening around them. They are not at all like
the Indie Kids, the Chosen Ones who save the world from vampires, monsters
and soul eaters and who are the complete opposite to Mikey’s gang.
Mikey has enough to deal with in day-to-day life; he isn’t the
hero, he’s not the centre of the action, all he wants is to make
sure the school doesn’t blow up before graduation. Again!
Mikey suffers from severe OCD which has him washing his hands until they bleed. He has a thing with anxiety he doesn’t really like to talk about, his sister is recovering from anorexia and his friend Jared is one quarter God of Cats!
While serious issues are present throughout the story there’s also a lot of humour and The Rest of Us Just Live Here is both moving and funny. A central underlying theme of adults’ preference to ignore and disregard anything other-worldly, as well as the pressure young people are under, runs through the story.
Patrick Ness is the award-winning and best-selling
author of the Chaos Walking trilogy. John Green has described him as
"an insanely beautiful writer". He has won every major prize
in children's fiction, including the Carnegie Medal twice.
