A Monster Calls: Inspired by an Idea from Siobhan Dowd
By: Patrick Ness / Narrated By: Jason Isaacs
Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
It starts with tears, goes on to sobs, then ends with letting go
I was startled when I felt the first lump in my throat. After all, Conor is a 13-year old brutally sarcastic young man. Actually, he’s just a boy, really. But life has made him grow up soon, grow up quickly. Whether it’s his parents divorce (Dad’s now living in America with his new family), his mother’s current illness, a bully at school, Conor deals with a lot in his life.
So he’s surprised when a monster, the yew tree across the way pulls up its roots and Walks, comes for him at 12:07 every night. But he’s not scared. He’s seen worse, and tho’ he tries not to admit it even to himself, there are things in his dreams which are FAR scarier than a monstrous yew tree, violent in its movements, demanding in its actions.
The Monster has come for Conor, is to tell three tales before it demands that Conor tell the fourth and final tale, a tale of truth. The whole time, Conor is angry. Because the stories the Monster tells him are not clear-cut, and they’re difficult, and to Conor at the time, they’re pointless. The boy is living in the arduous here and now; what time does he have to mull over the devastation the Monster has wrought in its past Walkings? The enormous gray in what to Conor would appear to be black and white?
To top it all off, his mother’s latest treatments aren’t going well; his grandmother has come to be with them, and his dad flies back into the country. Plus, daily he’s dealing with pity and isolation at school, with a bully who has made it his mission to discover how to break Conor.
Conor refuses to yield to any of them. He has beautiful, terrible, misguided hope. And it makes for a tremendous, treMENdous story. There is soooo much emotion in A Monster Calls, the story Patrick Ness wrote based on Siobhan Dowd’s final story idea. And you KNOW how I love the emotionally evocative. This had me feeling so very much. Here in my 50s, I found I could relate to the grief and fear Conor faces, the grief and fear each of the characters face. The Monster brings stories to Conor’s life, and things happen, things that cannot be undone. There’s one truly devastating scene where Conor finds himself after the Monster has left, chaos surrounding him, and his grandmother comes in to find her neatly-ordered world is in shambles. But Grandmother’s Life is in shambles—Conor’s mother, after all, is her daughter. And nothing will be neat and orderly again.
The book is masterfully, and I mean MASTERFULLY, narrated by Jason Isaacs. He is complete and utter perfection. And when you’re finding yourself with a lump in your throat, Isaacs deftly either lowers the tone of the narration so that you’re left in quiet devastation, or he kicks it up a notch so that you can completely feel the abject terror. And that sends you off into a gale of sobbing. I will most certainly be looking for more of his work—He narrates it; I’m there!
By the end of the book, the Monster forces healing into Life, but it’s the most painful kind imaginable. Conor faces the Truth, his own Truth, and it’s not the black or white he chooses but is entirely shaded gray. In the after-story interview, author Ness says if he’s not feeling it, he’s not writing it. So I can just picture him, his fingers flying over the keyboard, tears streaming down his face as his Hero, Conor, just a boy, learns what it is to be human.
How painful it all is.
And when all is said and done? 12:07 comes one more time. But this time Conor is ready for it, and I don't think my heart will ever be the same again…
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.