Book review: 'A Monster Calls'

Book: A Monster Calls
Author: Patrick Ness
Publisher: Walker
Pages: 240
Price: Rs299

Before losing her battle with breast cancer in 2007, author Siobhan Dowd thought of the plot for a children’s novel titled A Monster Calls. She had the characters, a premise and a beginning but didn’t have the time to finish it. Patrick Ness is the one who completed that task for her.

Every night, seven minutes past midnight, a monster who takes the form of an enormous yew tree calls out to 13-year-old Conor and tells him a story. The monster appears at crucial points in the novel, when Conor is conflicted or going through particularly troubled times. The second appearance, for example, takes place when Conor is sent to stay with his grandmother because his mother falls gravely ill. The stories the monster narrates to Conor leave him confused and often indignant because they always end with evil almost always triumphing over good. Conor is unimpressed with the lack of moral values in the tales and dismisses the monster sightings as dreams. After all, he tells himself, he’s too old to believe in monsters, right?

But he has his doubts because there are eerie incidents that make Conor wonder about the monster’s existence. One morning, he wakes up to find the floor covered with poisonous red yew tree berries. On another occasion, he single-handedly wrecks his grandmother’s carefully-decorated living room and later, he seems to acquire super human strength when he beats up the school bully, Harry.

Meanwhile, Conor’s mother is suffering from an advanced stage of cancer. She spends her days feeling sick or staring at the yew tree outside their house. The reference to a yew tree is not without reason: the tree is believed to have great healing powers.

To make matters worse, Conor is also a victim of bullying at school. His one friend — a girl — sticks up for him but the rest of his classmates distance themselves while the yobs at school beat him up. The teachers, who know about his mother’s terminal illness, constantly look at him with pity, which makes Conor all the more angry. As his mother’s condition deteriorates, the monster insists that Conor talk about a terrifying nightmare he’s had or risk being killed by the monster.

A Monster Calls is about a boy’s anxiety when faced with his mother’s tragic illness and the separate trials of a teenager dealing with a hostile high school. Ness merges these two stories with some deft writing. His vivid descriptions of the monster and Conor’s nightmare make the story come alive and the precarious balance between illusion and reality is maintained throughout this unputdownable novel. For instance, Ness’s description of the monster is both harrowing and fantastic. An ancient yew tree assumes the shape of a human — he has roots and limbs sticking out of a giant, menacing leafy body. It’s an intense and vivid description that is unforgettable.

Most importantly, A Monster Calls does not overflow with sentimentality, despite the morbid circumstances that are the background to the novel and the melancholic nature of the plot. Some of the dialogues between Conor and the monster even sparkle with subtle wit. In short, the Carnegie Medal that Ness won for this book is well deserved.