A Monster Calls

Sometimes you find a book. Other times, the book finds you. I picked A Monster Calls because I'd seen such great reviews for it. I wasn't prepared for what lay ahead.

Based on the summary, it sounded like a cross between Pan's Labyrinth and The Book of Lost Things. Was the monster real, or was he a coping mechanism for his mother's illness? Reading this book ripped apart my soul. Connor is reluctant to acknowledge his mother's illness. “She's getting better.” That's at least what Connor believes. Reading through the lines, it's clear she's not.

Having recently lost my best friend of 14 years (my dog Casey) I was unprepared for this book. She was sick for a long time before she passed. It was just like Connor's mom. I could see the decline, but I didn't want to admit it to myself. How can you? There is nothing worse than watching the decline of someone you love, knowing there is nothing you can do about it.

She passed away 3 weeks ago. I cried my tears, but I was oddly at peace with her passing. I had been prepared for over a year. Every extra day was a blessing. Reading this book brought all the pain out. Everything I had hid. Everything I had denied. It all came out. I was Connor. My dog was his mom.

I flew through the book with tears in my eyes. After finishing it, I buried it in my pile of books to return. I didn't want to look at it again. I loved the drawings, but the story touched a piece of me I didn't want to revisit. Correction, don't want to revisit. Perhaps that makes it a great book. Perhaps my judgement is clouded. This book found me at the best and worst of times. It's amazing how life works.

A Monster Calls is a short book filled with clever elements that will make you turn page after page in no time. I really enjoyed the pacing of the story, with its short chapters and beautifully subtle chapter names.

The whole book feels kind of subtle, because no one ever speaks openly about what is happening until the very end. And that ending comes so abruptly and with full force, that I needed a few minutes to comprehend it all. Of course I, and everybody in the book knew what was going to happen, but I felt just like Conor, still hoping and not accepting till the end.

Although the story is centered around a young boy, there is still enough to take away at an older age.

“Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”

Thankfully I never had to go through something like this in my life, but everything still felt eerily real. The clinging on ones childish naivety, the fear and hate of getting ignored for something you have no control over and the sheer heaviness of it all at such a young age.

All of this combined helped A Monster Calls to be remembered.

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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I hadn't even heard of this book until a couple of weeks ago, when it was recommended to me by a loyal reader. And I wasn't given a lot of details, just a strong recommendation and something about it being “about grief.” I could've used the warning that it was a YA book, but otherwise, that's all I needed to know (and the YA wouldn't have been a deal breaker or maker – I just would've liked to know what I was grabbing). I'm not going to say much more than that, really. It's about grief, there's some magic, and it's one of the most effective novels I've read this year.

There's been so much said about this book by others – I'm almost afraid to say much, I don't want to ruin anyone's discovery.

You've got a 13 year-old boy, Conor, whose mother is undergoing cancer treatment – and it's not going well. His grandmother (not at all the stereotypical grandmother-type, as Conor is very well aware), comes to stay with them with every new round of treatment, and Conor hates it. His father and his new wife have started a new life in the US. All of this has left Conor isolated, emotionally all alone – except at school, where he's bullied (when not alone). Somehow in his despair, Conor summons a monster, a monster older than Western Civilization, who visits the boy to help him.

He helps him via stories – I love this – not escapism, but through the lessons from stories – and not in a “You see, Timmy . . . “ kind of moralizing – just from understanding how people work through the stories.

After reading page 15, I jotted down in my notes, “Aw, man! This is going to make me cry by the end, isn't it?” I didn't, for the record, but I came close (and possibly, if I hadn't been sitting in a room with my daughter and her guitar teacher working on something, I might have.

The prose is easy and engaging – there's a strong sense of play to the language. There's some wonderfully subtle humor throughout, keeping this from being hopelessly depressing. The prose is deceptively breezy, it'd be very easy to read this without catching everything that Ness is doing. But mostly, what the book gives is emotion – there's a raw emotion on display here – and if it doesn't get to you, well, I just don't know what's wrong with you.

The magic, the monster and the protagonist remind me so much of Paul Cornell's Chalk (which is probably backwards, Chalk should be informed by this – oops). Eh, either way – this is cut from the same cloth.

That's a bit more than I intended to say, but I'm okay with that. I'm not convinced that this is really all that well-written, technically speaking. But it packs such an emotional wallop, it grabs you, reaches down your throat and seizes your heart and does whatever it wants to with it – so who cares how technically well it's written? (and, yeah, I do think the two don't necessarily go together). A couple of weeks from now, I may not look back on this as fondly – but tonight, in the afterglow? Loved this.

Love, grief, hope, loss, anger, fear, monsters and the power of stories. Give this one a shot. Maybe bring a Kleenex, you never know . . .