More Than This, by Patrick Ness: review Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it, said Philip Larkin. Teenager Seth, an American teenager and the main character in Patrick Ness's sparkling new YA novel More Than This, has to die (sort of) to realise the truth of Larkin's sentiment. More Than This has a harrowing opening, as we are told, in vivid detail, how Seth drowned. As readers, we're as bewildered as Seth himself when he wakes up alone in a scary, almost apocalyptic world. "He's died, and woken up in his own, personal hell," it says. And it's England, where he was born. In a series of beautifully paced flashbacks, we see what his life in America had been like and we learn the terrible secrets his past holds. Tenderly, Ness unveils what had been going on, including his love affair with his high school friend Gudmund, a boy who describes Seth as "weirdly self-contained." We are gradually allowed to piece together what had gone so wrong at home - with a "bizarrely hostile" mother and a father who is almost sedated on strong anti-depressants. His father turned to look at him, and Seth realised with a shock how rare it was for his father to look him straight in the eye. It was like having a statue suddenly ask you for directions," is one telling description. Seth is confused and tormented, desperate to know whether the Netherworld he now inhabits holds some particular purpose for him. The action flits between the present and past and Seth suffers terribly in both. There has been a backlash over the discovery of his relationship with Gudmund; and our sympathy for him grows as we learn the painful truth of what really happened to his younger brother Owen. The action in the book takes off when Seth discovers that he is not alone in his post-death world. He meets a boy called Tomasz and a girl called Regine (both endearing characters), who are trying to evade a sub-human ghoul, called simply The Driver. The scenes in which he pursues them in his Van (sometimes you just hear the Van) are gripping. The Driver is a caretaker of an army of the dead, who are kept alive in sort of online-linked coffins. The novel threatens at this point to veer off into a Matrix-like thriller but Ness keeps control with a strong plot and crisp dialogue. And Seth remains a complex and beguiling hero. The finale is dramatic but this is an impressively challenging and philosophical book for young adults, because Ness, author of the prize-winning book A Monster Calls, captures the ambiguity and bewilderment of being young and the uncertainty of what will happen to any of us next in life. There are some painful and wretched scenes (the worst terrors are left to your imagination) but the novel offers hope, too. Hope that bravery, loyalty, optimism, a sheer survival instinct and friendship are real and can override horror. It is a long book - 480 pages - but it is captivating throughout. Patrick Ness: More Than This (Walker Books, RRP £12.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £10.99 plus £1.35p&p