A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

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“But how do you fight all the different stuff inside?

By speaking the truth.”

Being a teenager is hard enough, but if you are also being bullied, ignored and waiting for death to strike when the bell tolls (at seven minutes past midnight it seems), you are in serious need of help; any help, no matter the shape. 

This is a book you want to finish and also never to end; a book that has the honour of having won both the Carnegie and the Kate Greenaway medals; a book waiting for you to cry your heart out; a book made of tales weaving themselves in search of the truth which, in the end, is all that matters.  

LRB

Critical perspective:

A Monster Calls takes Dowd's preliminary idea, and draws out of that bud a tale that has nothing of the hybrid about it. Received wisdom dictates that books published for children need endings that are, if not exactly happy, then at least hopeful. A happy ending would have been a betrayal of the kind of bracingly honest book this is, but hope can be hard to come by in such a story. Here the desperate honesty and refusal to compromise do allow for a sort of brutal clarity to emerge, and from that finally a glimpse of something like hope. Brave and beautiful, full of compassion, A Monster Calls fuses the painful and insightful, the simple and profound. The result trembles with life.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-monster-calls-by-patrick-ness-illustrated-by-jim-kay-2281553.html

A biography by the author himself:

I’m Patrick Ness. I claim three states in America as my home (as Americans are wont to do): I was born in Virginia, my first memories are Hawaiian, and I went to junior high and high school in Washington. Then I lived in California for college (at USC) and moved to the United Kingdom in 1999, where I’ve lived (mostly in London) ever since.

I’ve written nine books: 2 novels for adults (The Crash of Hennington and The Crane Wife), 1 short story collection for adults (Topics About Which I Know Nothing) and 10 novels for young adults (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, Monsters of Men, A Monster Calls, More Than This, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, Release, And the Ocean Was Our Sky, Burn and Different for Boys).

For these books, I’ve won the Carnegie Medal twice, the Costa Children’s Book Award, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Red House Book Award, the Jugendliteratur Preis, the UKLA Award, the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the fabulous, fabulous, fabulous Jim Kay also won the Greenaway for his illustrations in A Monster Calls (so buy that version, would you?).

I write screenplays as well, including for the movie version of A Monster Calls starring Liam Neeson, Sigourney Weaver and Felicity Jones, out January 2017.

I love the Decemberists, Peter Carey and A&W Cream Soda. I dislike onions. Intensely.

https://patrickness.com/about-me/

Reviews by our book club members:

"As we grow older we face the tragic loss of our dearest. Conor, a 13-year-old boy must also face the immediate death of his mother and does so feeling alone. Well, actually, it's not like that. He will have the help of a Monster.

This is a book that captivates you from the beginning to the end. You won't want to turn to the next page, but at the same time you´ll want to reach the last one. Through a simple style but very effective the writer perfectly blends reality and fantasy, dialogues and reflections. He makes you laugh, makes you cry and above all makes you enjoy it.

The author, Patrick Ness, catches us and doesn´t let you go. Like Conor tried to do with his mum. 

Please, read this novel. Don´t let it pass. It will mark you for life!"

JLJG

“Death is the real monster that calls 13 year old Conor as a frequent nightmare and the yew tree is only the imaginary point which, as a healing and comforting element, helps the boy escape from a real life of school bullying, family problems and what is wrote, his mother’s letal cancer. 

The boy tries, as hard as he can stand, to pretend he feels all right, believing his mother’s positive expectations about the treatment for her illness, but his worst nightmare is the harsh reality of accepting the grief of death, even the guilt which involves the separation.

The book pays homage to another writer who died of cancer using a fighting teenager learning how to control emotions and survival, mixing the most tender and the most cruel. Life stories are usually that way.

The novel was taken to the big screen by the Spanish director JA Bayona, with a script by the very writer. There, the visual effects increase even more, if possible, the intensity of all the feelings already mentioned in the book.”

CJ

“Conor is not afraid of the monster, but he is anguished.  The monster that he visits at 12:07 is the monster that we all have inside.  The one that we all want to avoid, the one that confronts us with our own emotional conflicts and our fears.  He is a benign monster who confronts us so that we make visible the reality that oppresses and distresses us.  He represents the inability of human beings to face our problems, to accept loss.  When he finally forces us to make it visible, to put it into words, we feel relieved.  Conor grieves for his sick mother, he knew from the beginning that she was going to die, but he also grieves for himself.  He is a child who lives like an adult.  He feels tremendous pain and wants it to end soon, because his mother has no cure.  The monster helps him reveal the meaning of his nightmares.  It is a very emotional and human story.  It is better understood when you have had a similar experience.  There are things that are not said, but are felt.  Very interesting is the tenderness in the mother and daughter relationship, the emotional difference between grandmother and grandson and the realistic relationship between separated father and son.  A story of our world that leaves no one indifferent.”

PR

Praise: 

'Powerfully felt, this is stylistically Ness’s book, but communicates Dowd-like wisdom. Both realistic and magical, it is a fable about the complexity of our emotions, giving us permission to feel anger and illuminating the nature of loss.' The Sunday Times

' […] this haunting and demanding book shines with compassion, insight and flashes of humour and is a collaboration that highlights the exceptional talents of Ness, Dowd and Kay. A worthy tribute.' Daily Mail 

'Electrifying and hugely readable, it feels like a genuine act of authorial kindness when the gut-wrenching ending conveys a glimmer of redemption.' Daily Telegraph

'This award-winning, uncompromising novel is a valuable read for older children struggling to understand life’s unavoidable trials.' Time Out

https://www.walker.co.uk/A-Monster-Calls-9781406361803.aspx

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