Review: A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Such a lovely and wonderful work!
It is as much as for stories as for healing. Ness first got me with his beautiful way to start a book...
"and now it's time to hand the baton on to you. Stories don't end with the writers, however many started the race. Here's what Siobhan and I came up with. So go. Run with it.
Make trouble"
and then with
"Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt."
This one, surely did it to me. Particularly because I lost someone in the same way recently. I could totally identify with Conner, and understand how afraid was he to make conscious that truth in particular. How he wanted not to be excluded by this situtation and yet, he was invisible.
He was full of anger, and that was not bad, nor good. He just needed to heal, and that is why a healing tree (yew) came to his help.
The road for him may be yet hard, but at least he was ready to face it thanks to the monster.
As for the way in which Patrick Ness tells the story, is simply delightful. Quite easy to read and keep the pace, but I think is truly meant to be read in one sitting, so you don't lose track of the actions and thoughts happening in the story.
It reminded me what my sister (who's a psychologist) always says: "the words heal", that is the reason why I think, Connor has to listen to stories, and to understand them. Luckly later the Monster explains them, because I was as lost as the main character. But yet I could understand that deep and hard message at the end, on how to accept your own feelings towards the inevitable of cancer.
Highly recommended.

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