July 24, 2025

Issue #20: A Monster Calls

A brilliant story told with fierce clarity, woven with hard truth, and laced with love: a modern classic

Book Review

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

This book ends with one of the most profound truths I’ve learned as an adult: 

that two opposing feelings can exist truly, vibrantly, and simultaneously within ourselves.

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Book information and ratings:

A Monster Calls	by Patrick Ness, 2011
Genre:	YA Fiction
Subject:	Grief
Rating:	All time favorite!
Read as:	Print copy
Readability:	Accessible
Subject Weight:	Very heavy

How I found this book:

My friend Sara handed this book to me after bookclub one evening. I don’t remember what we were talking about that made her think of this title, but she sent me home with it. 

I read it that weekend and cried and cried. 

My husband read it the next weekend and cried also. 

Then, we watched the movie adaptation together and cried again.

This book toes the line between reality and fantasy in the same way life does. 

This book is about an intensely painful situation at the tenderest of growing up years.

This book looks grief square in the face and does not break eye contact until the hardest thing is seen, admitted, and understood. 

****

I was deeply moved by this story, a YA novel that explained grief more clearly and bravely than any other book I have ever read. I wanted to read it to my 2 oldest, but it is deep and dark and explores very, very real pain. After some discussion with my husband, we decided to read it to them (my boys were 13 and 10 at the time). I felt that exposure to this story was important–that they needed to hear this story–that this was the type of story that used to be passed down by shamans for our spiritual health, nourishment, and understanding. 

And their reactions to this story and the discussions we had as a result are priceless. 

****

Personal Note:

Not only was the story substantial in its meaning and beauty, but the illustrations were grounding and breathtaking. After I returned Sara’s copy to her, I ordered my own used copy…but it was bare! For some unknown (and unimaginable) reason, the publisher printed copies of this book without the illustrations! I was almost offended. How could they? 

So, I ordered another copy–hard backed and with full illustrations. I tried to hand my bland copy off to Sheri, but she made the same mistake I had and had ordered multiple copies herself! 

I ended up leaving it in the book box in our neighborhood. My point: be sure to get a copy with illustrations! It adds a lot. I promise. 

ALSO, the movie adaptation is excellent! Leam Neeson does the voice of the monster, it was true to the story (mostly), and it followed the illustrations beautifully. I was very impressed.

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About this book:

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

Conor was awake when it came. 

He’d had a nightmare. Well, not a nightmare. The nightmare. The one he’d been having a lot lately. The one with the darkness and wind and the screaming. The one with the hands slipping from his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to hold on. The one that always ended with–

“Go away,” Conor whispered into the darkness of his bedroom, trying to push the nightmare back, not let it follow him into the world of the waking. “Go away now.” (p 1)

With this gripping and highly relatable opening, we are introduced to Conor, a thirteen-year-old boy. 

Conor’s parents are divorced. He lives with his mum and has sparse contact with his dad. His grandmother (maternal) is also in the picture…well, grandma and his mother’s cancer. 

Conor is tenacious, caring, and independent in the face of it all…but the monster is calling. The monster is coming. And there is no keeping it from the waking world. 

And then we follow Conor’s grief journey through denial, anger, and acceptance–through gripping fear and the deepest unknown–until he bravely finds his footing in the harsh light of reality. 

****

My boys are wonderfully tender-hearted individuals. Our family values and rules include that name-calling and any show of violence is unacceptable. So, when the main character, Conor, has a violent outburst at school, my boys were uncomfortable. But, when he became aggressive and destructive at his grandma’s house, my oldest was completely confounded. 

He sat up in his bed, eyes wide and worried. “He did WHAT?? Why would he do that? What was he thinking! He just made everything worse!” 

So, we talked about it. 

I asked them both to explain to me the situation our main character was in: His mom is dying. If she dies, he will lose his home with her. His dad’s new family had no place for him. His grandmother had room for him, but was not a patient or pleasant person. His best friend isn’t talking to him. He feels invisible at school, to peers and teachers alike. In other words: this is a situation of real abandonment, on top of watching his mum suffer and the heartbreak of losing her.

Then, we talked about how all of those big feelings (loneliness, worthlessness, grief, anger, fear, and heartbreak) had nowhere to go for Conor.

We talked about how Conor feels bad, but it doesn’t make him a bad person, even when he’s lashing out. 

We talked about who they (my boys) can talk to about their feelings: if not mom or dad, who? Who cares about them? Who do they trust? 

We talked about what would happen if one or both of us (their parents) died? What is the plan? 

And my boys nodded solemnly and pulled their comforters up over their discomfort. 

****

I’m not sure what my boys will remember from our reading experience, but we did watch the movie together. I watched them and didn’t notice that exposure to such heavy subject matter was upsetting beyond them feeling uncomfortable–so, I dearly hope it was enriching! 

But, no matter your age, this book is a master work of artistry, storytelling, and truth–a gem that deserves a place on the shelf beside the classics. 

****

This book ends with one of the most profound truths I’ve learned as an adult: 

that two opposing feelings can exist truly, vibrantly, and simultaneously within ourselves.

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About the author: 

I’m Patrick Ness. I claim three states in America as my home (as Americans are wont to do): I was born in Virginia, my first memories are Hawaiian, and I went to junior high and high school in Washington. Then I lived in California for college (at USC) and moved to the United Kingdom in 1999, where I’ve lived (mostly in London) ever since.

I’ve written nine books: 2 novels for adults (The Crash of Hennington and The Crane Wife), 1 short story collection for adults (Topics About Which I Know Nothing) and 10 novels for young adults (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, Monsters of Men, A Monster Calls, More Than This, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, Release,  And the Ocean Was Our Sky, Burn and Different for Boys).

For these books, I’ve won the Carnegie Medal twice, the Costa Children’s Book Award, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Red House Book Award, the Jugendliteratur Preis, the UKLA Award, the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the fabulous, fabulous, fabulous Jim Kay also won the Greenaway for his illustrations in A Monster Calls (so buy that version, would you?).

I write screenplays as well, including for the movie version of A Monster Calls starring Liam Neeson, Sigourney Weaver and Felicity Jones, out January 2017.

I love the Decemberists, Peter Carey and A&W Cream Soda. I dislike onions. Intensely. patrickness.com

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Sources:

Ness, Patrick. A Monster Calls. Somerville MA, Candlewick Press, 2011.

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*This is issue #20 of the The Book Moth.

Visit katewebbwrites.com for more information and free resources. Thank you for your readership!