A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (Idea by Siobahn Dowd)

A Monster Calls was not what I expected.

...but it was good.

I love Patrick Ness' ability to bring you close to the emotion the characters are feeling.  It's something I've noticed in his writing that I haven't picked up on in a lot of other stories.

(It's the British vs. American, very generalized thing about external vs. internal action that I've been blabbing about for the past few weeks)

A Monster Calls is about grief, anger, regret, and death.  It's also about hope, letting go/peace, and forgiving yourself.

In the story, a young boy is confronted by a monster who tells him three stories, all containing a twist.  Then the monster asks for the boy's story.

Between the stories, we read about this boy's life and the things that have happened to him that created a monster inside him.

It's a powerful story about how much of a monster we can be to ourselves, and how complex the emotions of loss can be.

I don't tend to read general fiction like The Faults In Our Stars (although it looks lovely) because I'm not interested in 'real life'.  I'm interested in communicating about real issues, couched in a fantasy or science fiction world.

Patrick Ness is a master and his stories are excellent study material for the writer wanting to bring more to the table than a general romp in fantasyland.


I'll be moving to a new blog in March -- I'll still be talking about stories, but I'll be widening the field to include film and television (and the occasional play).  Details to come.

First Line Friday No. 25

Happy Friday, everyone!

You know how I keep fangirling over Patrick Ness and his amazing Chaos Walking Trilogy?  Well, I found out that my library has another book by him available on Kindle -- the book started out as an idea by another author but when she died, Patrick was asked to write the story.  He talks a little bit about it in the introduction -- he simply tried to write a story that she would like.  I'm a quarter of the way through and although it's very different from Chaos Walking, the same things I liked about CW are present in A Monster Calls: intimacy between story and reader, emotional intensity/internal action mixed with external action, and thought-provoking subject matter.

Enjoy.


"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 the 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 waking.  "Go away now."

He glanced over at the clock his mum had put on his bedside table.  12:07.  Seven minutes past midnight.  Which was late for a school night, late for a Sunday, certainly.

He'd told no one about the nightmare.  Not his mum, obviously, but no one else either, not his dad in their fortnightly (or so) phone call, definitely not his grandma, and no one at school.  Absolutely not.  

What happened in the nightmare was something no one else ever needed to know."

-from A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (idea by Siobhan Dowd)


Reasons to Keep Reading:

1.  "As they do"...thrilling!
2.  What is "the" nightmare he's been having?
3.  Why won't he tell anyone about it?
4.  Where is the monster??
5.  Why is the monster there?

Sound like something you want to read?  It's only $4.99 on Kindle!  How exciting!  You could also borrow it from a library, if you are so inclined (or poor, like me).

Hope you have an absolutely brilliant weekend -- I'll be finishing up this book so I can review it on Monday!