A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls is Patrick Ness’s 2011 young adult novel, expanded from a story idea originally developed by the British writer Siobhan Dowd before her death from cancer in 2007. Ness took on the project at the invitation of Dowd’s editors, working from her notes and characters but writing the actual novel himself. The result is one of the most powerful and difficult books for young readers published in this century.

Conor O’Malley is thirteen years old and his mother is dying of cancer. The novel follows Conor through the slow weeks and months of her illness, through the bullying he faces at school, the complicated relationships with his estranged father and his strict grandmother, and the recurring nightmare he refuses to talk about. One night a monster comes to his bedroom window. The monster is the ancient yew tree from the churchyard nearby, somehow walking, somehow speaking, and it tells Conor that it is going to tell him three stories. After the third story, Conor will tell the monster a fourth, and that fourth story will be the truth.

What the monster is, what it represents, and what truth Conor has been refusing to admit are the questions that drive the book toward its devastating conclusion. Patrick Ness writes about grief with the kind of unflinching honesty that almost no other YA writer manages. The book deals with anticipatory grief, with the impossible feelings that surround a parent’s terminal illness, with the wish that a sick parent would just die already so the waiting could end, and with the unbearable guilt that comes with that wish.

The Jim Kay illustrations in the original edition are essential to the book’s full effect, with their dark ink work giving the monster and the nightmare scenes their proper weight. The 2016 film adaptation is also strong but the book is the original and remains the more powerful experience. For young readers dealing with serious illness in their families, and for adult readers who have been there, A Monster Calls is essential.