Review: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, from an original idea by Siobhan Dowd, and illustrated by Jim Kay

Release Date: September 15, 2011
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 224

Source: My local library.

Image from the author's website.

Summary:

The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.

But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming...

The monster in his back garden, though, this monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth.

Costa Award winner Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final idea of much-loved Carnegie Medal winner Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself. Darkly mischievous and painfully funny, A Monster Calls is an extraordinarily moving novel of coming to terms with loss from two of our finest writers for young adults. (From the author's website.)
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In Patrick Ness's novel A Monster Calls, the yew tree in the churchyard behind thirteen-year-old Conor's house comes walking. The yew tree monster begins showing up while Conor's mother is in the midst of taxing chemotherapy treatments. So yes, A Monster Calls is a Cancer Book. But it is also a story about stories; the monster approaches Conor because he wants to tell the boy stories. And the stories the monster tells have teeth. The first one begins like a fairy tale, but ends unconventionally. The monster is not interested in falsehoods and happy endings.

In between Conor's encounters with the monster, Conor lives the painful, awkward life of a child with a sick parent. Conor's teachers and classmates treat him differently because his mother has cancer. Regular social and school rules no longer apply to Conor, and the unreality and unfairness of it all frustrates him. To top it off, the monster wants Conor to tell a story, too. He wants Conor to tell the truth. And it isn't the truth I thought he would tell.

A Monster Calls is a lyrical, well-written novel that contains moments of dark humor, uncomfortable realism, and, of course, pain. The novel also contains illustrations by Jim Kay that add to the foreboding, sometimes gothic atmosphere of the novel without taking the visuals completely away from the reader's imagination. However, enjoyed is not a verb I would use to describe my experience as I read this novel. Nevertheless, I highly recommend A Monster Calls to anyone of any age who wishes to read a powerful book. A Monster Calls is marketed and shelved as a young adult novel, but I think I would have a hard time recommending the book to teens and especially children looking to read for fun. This novel requires readers to acknowledge their own mortality and--perhaps most terrifying--the mortality of the people they love and all the uncertainties inherent in life. And there is the fact that Ness built this novel out of characters and a premise developed by Siobhan Dowd, an author who died of cancer before she could write this book. Different readers will react differently to this information, which Ness presents in a note before beginning his tale. I can't hand this book to someone and promise that they will enjoy it. But I can promise that they will walk away with a new appreciation for life, truth, and the struggles we may all face.