While technically a children’s book, A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness, told a simple yet emotional story that speaks to any willing reader. The novel weaves a tale of a middle-school aged boy named Conor, whose mother has been sick with cancer. Conor struggles with bullying at school, and his father lives across the ocean with another family. Needless to say, he faces some difficult trials. When the willow tree in Conor’s backyard turns into a stubborn, albeit friendly, monster who visits him at the same time every night, he must face an even greater obstacle: the truth. Told in magical realism , in which the lines between reality and fantasy are blissfully blurred, the story elegantly captures the pain Conor encounters.
The book is written for young readers, so it is refreshingly absent of dense language and heavy content. Rather, instead of trying (and failing) to make an impression with flowery descriptions, Ness touches the hearts of readers gently and profoundly. The accessiblemetaphor of a wise and eternal Monster, made of a yew tree, who demands truth, tells stories, and defies Conor’s expectations, illustrates the complexity of human emotion.
Once you’re done with the book, there is also a movie!
What’s more, children and adults alike can easily understand the narrative. Laced with sadness and bursting with hope, Conor’s character may be simple, but he is no ordinary boy, nor are any of the other faces in the novel. Each reader can relate to him based purely on his emotions, for who does not feel sadness in the midst of pain? Who does not feel hope in the midst of desperation? The book’s motifs of misery, sorrow, but also courage and hope, shine clearly through the characters. Simply put, Conor and the cast are easy to empathize with because they are so evidently human at heart.
For those with complicated hearts, which is really everyone, the story will speak to the tangle of feeling inside them. As the author wrote in his essay, “Writing A Monster Calls,” “Conor is just realizing, OK, I’m a bit of a mess, but it doesn’t make me bad and it doesn’t make me wrong. It just makes me human.” When a book can set aside the desire to impress with over-the-top vocabulary and simply connect to the readers’ feelings, when it can reflect the complex web at the center of everyone’s emotions, then it is succeeding.
Discussion Questions:
- Why should adults and children read the same books? How can children’s novels still satisfy advanced readers?
- Does advanced writing style or overall message matter more? Which makes a stronger connection with the audience?
- Can a genre be fantasy and realistic fiction at the same time? To which genre should “magical realism” belong?
- Does magical realism do a better job at expressing complicated concepts than regular fiction? For example, does the presence of a monster in A Monster Calls help to more clearly illustrate the messiness of human emotion?
