People aren't angry and they seem to get along pretty well-even with Noise. Todd, who's used to towns being like Prentisstown, says that 'it feels like I've wandered right off New World into some whole other place altogether' (17.84) when he gets here. Farbranchįarbranch is probably the golden child of the New World (well, until Mayor Prentiss flattens it to the ground). The countryside, then, offers him a new way of thinking about the world and how to live in it. To Todd, after all, the world as he knows it is meant for people to crowd and control. Which is good in one way but weird in another' (20.52). He says there is 'no sign of any kind of settlement or people except for the dusty road itself. In other words, it's self sufficient and happy, without Noise and people ruining everything. Todd finds the countryside 'all just life, going over itself, returning and cycling and eating itself to grow' (1.60). It's a nice break from all those settlements with their weird laws and quirks, and since so much of the book deals with society (and all the things that can go wrong with it), it's important that there's this neutral ground. Most of Todd's journeys take him through the countryside of the New World. The Prentisstown vibe taints everything it touches. So even though Todd leaves it at the beginning, since the town is where he's been raised, it's responsible for all the anger he carries. It's enough to really bum a person out.īasically, Prentisstown is the armpit of the New World. The fact that everyone is so unhappy is made way worse by Noise-you don't just hear your own unhappiness, but the unhappy noise of everyone else. Todd hates 'every minute of every day in my stupid, stinking life in this stupid, stinking town' (2.21). And it is one Noisy, angry, womanless place. Prentisstown is more about how you feel when you're there than what it physically looks like. Okay, now you can imagine what it's like to live in Prentisstown. We see a couple different settings in The Knife of Never Letting Go, so we're going to give you a tour of the highlights: the bad, the good, and the better. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.Prentisstown, the Countryside of the New World, Farbranch With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him - something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men.

The knife of never letting go book 2