Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls is a story about a boy named Conor who is losing his mother to cancer. He has been tormented for months by a nightmare (the story of which is not revealed until close to the end of the novel) and is visited by a "monster" transformed from the yew tree near his house that his mother has been staring at so often these days. The monster will serve an important purpose in Conor's life, though he doesn't know it yet.

I loved this book. I absolutely loved it. It so beautifully speaks about the nature of grief: when it appears (not necessarily after the loved one dies), what it can do to the mind of the bereaved, what it feels like in the body.  Having lost a few family members to cancer myself, I could relate with the way Ness writes Conor. He feels angry. He feels helpless. Because it has come from a "healing tree," when the monster appears he hopes that it is here to heal his mother. I remember searching for some unknown, alternative, or magical cure when I was 13 and losing my Grammy to pancreatic cancer. When her conditioned worsened, I saw it as partly my fault. And I remember the extreme sadness in seeing her close to her final days, when I didn't recognize her... when she even frightened me a little. But worst of all was watching Grampy's reaction. I overheard him, sobbing, asking my aunt, "What am I going to do?" 

Conor was the one who needed healing from the monster. When a loved one is sick or dying, those who are well need care too.

Close to the end of the novel, the author examines the act of letting a loved one go. This is difficult
for the dying as well as the one watching her die. When my aunt Suey was dying of breast cancer a couple of years ago, my mom (Suey's older sister) stayed with her almost constantly in her final days. Although we all felt that the time was nearing, Suey couldn't let go with my mom holding her so tightly. Finally my mom met up with what she already knew: that now was the time. She called me at work and drove to pick me up so that I could be there. Suey passed before we arrived. It was as if by telling someone else that it was time, she had given Suey permission to go. This is something that Conor goes through, helped by the monster. It says, "Of course you are afraid, ... and yet you will still do it" (220).

Something I questioned in this book was the way that teachers treated Conor. A few told him that they were available if he needed to talk, but he was unwilling to even acknowledge his situation. He hated the fact that other people knew and that it isolated him. Ness writes, "Conor hadn't heard a word of his lessons in school, but the teachers hadn't told him off for his inattentivness, skipping over him when they asked questions to the class. Mrs Marl didn't even make him hand in his life writing homework, even though it was due that day" (132). I agree that teachers should make exceptions for a student going through the loss of a family member, but I wonder how far those exceptions should extend... and what else we could do? Sometimes having a task to complete is helpful when you are "waiting" as Conor puts it. Not everyone will be lucky enough to be visited by a healing tree who has come walking just for them. Would it be helpful to give a student like Conor this book to read?  At what point would that student be able to read a story about losing a loved one without it being too painful?

One thing that Conor was told to do by a teacher was write. He chose not to and she didn't push him. The monster tells Conor over and over about the power of stories, and it's only the monster who gets him to tell his painful truth. But I do believe that writing - even just putting a pen to paper and writing without thinking about what's coming out - when you are going through a difficult time is extremely helpful. I wonder what that teacher could have done to help Conor realize that. In a non-magical-realistic novel, the teacher could have done much of what the monster did for him.

But I do think the magical realism works perfectly in this book. I love magical realism and I especially love its use here in creating a sort of guide for Conor and a second monstrous representation of his mother's illness; the two monsters together portray Conor's complex feelings and show the reader how big these feelings can be.

Here is the (official?) book trailer that features the novel's fantastic illustrations