Review of “A Monster Calls” by Patrick Ness

This is a small book with a big impact. In some ways, you might call it the dark and more grown-up version of Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. In Sendak’s book, Max is a very little boy who goes on a wild rampage, and his mother sends him to bed without supper. In the night, Max visits with monsters, who help him regain a sense of potency and heal emotionally so he can stop being angry at his mother.

Ness’s book about Conor, a boy of 13, is appropriately more sophisticated, albeit similar in theme. Conor also communicates with a monster at night. In Conor’s case, the monster helps him overcome his fear and pain and ambivalence regarding his mother’s terminal cancer. In both books, the monstrous impulses within us are reified in a way that accords them full respect for the roles they play in our lives. In both books as well, these contradictory impulses are identified as natural. Critically, they are not depicted as making us unlovable, or something to feel guilty about, but rather, as just part of being human.

Conor’s monster insists on telling him three stories, and demands that Conor tell him one in return when he is done. All of the monster’s stories are similar in that they have unexpected outcomes, and help demonstrate that nothing is ever black and white. (Appropriately, the memorable illustrations for the book, drawn by Jim Kay, are done not only in shades of black and white, but also gray.) The monster demands that the fourth story, the story from Conor, be the truth:

“‘You know that your truth, the one that you hide, Conor O’Malley, is the thing you are most afraid of. … You will tell me the fourth tale. You will tell me the truth.’

‘And what if I don’t?’ Conor said.

‘The monster gave the evil grin again. ‘Then I will eat you alive.’”

[As a metaphor, truer words were never spoken!]

Conor hates the fact that, as his father points out, “Stories don’t always have happy endings. … Stories were wild, wild animals and went off in directions you couldn’t expect.”

But Conor’s mother’s deteriorating health, and Conor’s monster’s persistence, give him no choice. He finally has to face up to the story he needs to tell in order that it not eat him alive, as the monster predicted it would.

Evaluation: Patrick Ness, like Conor, tells a story that doesn’t end in a fairytale fashion, but instead gives us something true. When someone we love dies or is dying, there are so many conflicting emotions. We may feel awful just for not always being sad, or feel selfish and thus contemptible for wanting the pain to be over with for us. Conor has to accept that this is the truth about loss; only then can he start to heal, without destroying himself in the process.

Rating: 4/5

Published in the U.S. by Candlewick Press, 2011

Note: When novelist Siobhan Dowd died of cancer at age 47 in 2007, she left four finished books and an idea for a fifth. Patrick Ness was commissioned to write a book from the idea for the fifth. The result is a tribute to her in several ways.

Patrick Ness