A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Conor. Someone is calling his name. He was having a nightmare – the nightmare he has every night since the day his mother started treatments – but the calling is not part of the screaming and the wind and the darkness. The caller is a monster who looks like the yew tree from the churchyard on the hill near his house. This monster is not frightening but old, and strange, and wild. He says there will be four stories. He’s come to tell the first three and help Conor tell the fourth: the truth. It turns out that knowing the truth might be more dangerous than the thought of living with his grandma, being bullied at school, or worst, the nightmare itself.

Although it’s been days since I finished this book, I feel like I’m still processing the powerful impression it made on me. As the last idea for a story and Patrick Ness’s tribute to the MG/YA author Siobhan Dowd who died of cancer at age 47, it’s uncannily fitting.  It seems natural that the outside of A Monster Calls – the cover art, printing, and illustrations – would follow suit in the singular origins of this book, notwithstanding the trend of unique type face and setting in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy. Clearly the publisher got it right: what’s inside is a beauty to be treasured.

I remain amazed at how such a small, seemingly simple book can completely unhinge me. I hope the title and cover don’t turn readers off because this bears no resemblance to a horror or paranormal story. A contemporary novel at its core, A Monster Calls is about thirteen-year-old Conor O’Malley whose mother is losing her battle with cancer. Unbeknown to Conor, he called an ancient monster in an hour of need to tell him three stories. It all sounds so juvenile, right? But then each of these stories, set historically in Conor’s own backyard, is brilliantly complex, and not at all what Conor wants to hear. Nothing is black or white, which results in an uneasy journey to accepting the truth of his life, one that is raw, deep, and above all honest. In a narrative which includes a dramatic, commonplace disease like cancer it would be easy to merely blindly venture unawares into melodramatic or sentimental territory. But A Monster Calls steers far clear of it. Bringing me to serious sobbing in a few passages, it’s a heartbreaking, real and moving depiction of grief, loss, and guilt. I would not be surprised if it makes the Newbery honor list next year as it’s already made my list of top reads for 2011.

Note: A Monster Calls is available in the UK and will be published is the US in September. (I’ll be praying to the cover gods that they don’t change a thing in the US edition.)

If you want to know more about Patrick Ness and how he took Siobhan Dowd’s original idea and characters and made them into his own full-length novel check out this interesting interview over at The Mountains of Instead.

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