Kin: Oprah's Book Club
Tayari Jones
Another excellent Fiction for readers interested in this subject
A Monster Calls
Fiction
★★★★★5.0 (1)
A short, unflinching novel about a boy facing his mother's illness, which treats grief and anger with rare honesty and gives readers of any age permission to feel them.
What It's About
Thirteen-year-old Conor O'Malley is living through something no child should: his mother is seriously ill, the treatments are not working the way everyone promised, and the adults around him keep speaking in careful half-truths. At school he is either bullied or pitied, and at home he is trying hard to be fine. Then, one night just after midnight, the old yew tree from the churchyard behind his house walks up to his window. It has come to tell him stories, and when it is done, it expects one from him in return.
Patrick Ness developed the book from an idea left by Siobhan Dowd, who died before she could write it. The prose is spare and fast, the chapters are short, and the monster's fables are deliberately strange: they refuse the tidy morals of fairy tales and insist that people can be two contradictory things at once. Many editions include Jim Kay's dark, inky illustrations, which make the book feel close to a graphic novel in places.
It is marketed for young readers, but it is not a gentle book. It deals with anticipatory grief, rage, guilt and the exhausting effort of hoping, and it does so without condescension. Most adults can read it in an afternoon, and many find it hits harder than they expected. It is best approached knowing it will be emotional rather than braced for a plot twist.
Read this if you…
- want a short novel that deals with illness and grief honestly, without sentimentality
- are looking for a book to share with a teenager going through something hard
- appreciate fables and dark, fairy-tale imagery used for serious emotional ends
Skip it if you…
- are currently in the rawest stage of losing a parent to illness and not ready to revisit it
- prefer long, plot-heavy fantasy over a brief, tightly focused emotional story
Key Ideas
- 1
Grief that starts before the loss
The novel is about anticipatory grief: the strain of watching someone you love become ill while everyone insists things might still be fine. Ness captures how isolating that limbo is for a child, and how the pressure to stay hopeful can feel like its own kind of burden that nobody around Conor quite acknowledges.
- 2
Stories that refuse easy morals
The monster's tales feature princes, apothecaries and parsons, but they deliberately defy expectations about who is good and who is wicked. Their point is that people are messy and contradictory, which sets up the book's larger argument that Conor's own complicated feelings do not make him a bad person.
- 3
Anger as an honest response
Conor's fury, at bullies, at well-meaning teachers, at his grandmother, at the situation itself, is never treated as something to be corrected. The book takes a child's rage seriously and shows destruction and lashing out as part of grieving rather than a detour from it.
- 4
The courage of telling the truth
The monster's demand is simple and terrifying: Conor must eventually speak a truth he has been avoiding. Without spelling out what it is, the book builds toward the idea that naming what we are ashamed to feel can be more healing than any comforting lie.
- 5
Text and image working together
In illustrated editions, Jim Kay's shadowy, textured artwork bleeds across pages and gives the monster a physical, unsettling presence. The pictures are not decoration; they carry much of the book's atmosphere and make the line between dream and reality feel genuinely uncertain.
Limitations
The book's brevity is a strength but also means secondary characters, such as Conor's father and his friend Lily, are sketched rather than fully developed. Some readers find the emotional direction predictable well before the climax, and the deliberate bluntness can feel manipulative to those who dislike being steered toward tears. Its focus is narrow by design: it centres one boy's inner experience and says little about practical caregiving or the wider family's grief. Readers who pick up a text-only edition may also miss some of the atmosphere the illustrations provide.
Questions Readers Ask
- What age is A Monster Calls suitable for?
- It is usually shelved for readers around twelve and up, and the language is easy enough for younger confident readers. The bigger question is emotional readiness: it deals directly with a parent's serious illness, fear and anger. Many adults read it on its own merits, and it works well as a book for a parent and teenager to read together.
- Should I read the illustrated edition?
- If you can, yes. Jim Kay's artwork won major praise and adds a great deal of menace and mood, especially in the monster's scenes. The story stands on its own in plain text, but the illustrated edition is the version many readers consider definitive.
- How does the book compare to the 2016 film?
- Patrick Ness wrote the screenplay for J.A. Bayona's film, so it stays close to the novel's story and spirit and is widely considered a faithful adaptation. The book is more interior and lets you sit inside Conor's thoughts, while the film leans on visual spectacle and performances. Reading first is worthwhile, but both hold up.
- Published
- 2015
- ISBN
- 9781406361803
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Category
- Fiction
Book details and cover from Google Books.
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