News of the World Book Review

Being a young child and having been held captive by a Kiowa tribe for 4 years, Joannah doesn’t know much English and so I loved how the author chose to write in her vernacular; I’ve not read this a lot (mainly in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help) but being a former English Language student, I find it fascinating, and it really aids in making the story immersive. Throughout she calls the captain “Kep-den” and moments like that really helped me carve out her character in my mind. Speaking very few words in the book’s entirety, what she did say became much more impactful because of it – her silence alone wouldn’t have been this poignant.
Despite my love of the story itself, one thing which I could not get on board with was the lack of speech marks for the dialogue. I’ve read books without speech marks before and I’ve seen how authors use it to make the narrative flow like a stream of consciousness and up the pace. However, on this occasion, it only jarred my progress as I kept having to read passages again, not knowing if it was dialogue or narrative.