The conclusion is brave, honest and a huge release. Using folklore stories to illustrate that good and bad are all part of the whole, the tree monster drags the reluctant Conor to confront his own demons and, in doing so, to face the future. It is an intensely raw but emotionally rewarding rite-of-passage for young teenager Conor, whose divorced mum is dying of cancer. Daniel Hahn * Independent * Award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd died of cancer before she could write this book, but the choice of Patrick Ness (Chaos Walking Trilogy) to take her idea and create this heartbreaking story was inspired. Brave and beautiful, full of compassion, A Monster Calls fuses the painful and insightful, the simple and profound. Here the desperate honesty and refusal to compromise do allow for a sort of brutal clarity to emerge, and from that finally a glimpse of something like hope.
A happy ending would have been a betrayal of the kind of bracingly honest book this is, but hope can be hard to come by in such a story. Received wisdom dictates that books published for children need endings that are, if not exactly happy, then at least hopeful. Nicolette Jones * The Sunday Times * A Monster Calls takes Dowd's preliminary idea, and draws out of that bud a tale that has nothing of the hybrid about it. Both realistic and magical, it is a fable about the complexity of our emotions, giving us permission to feel anger and illuminating the nature of loss.
* Time Out * Powerfully felt, this is stylistically Ness's book, but communicates Dowd-like wisdom. This award-winning, uncompromising novel is a valuable read for older children struggling to understand life's unavoidable trials.
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