A Monster Calls
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The Monster showed up after midnight. As they do. But it isn't the monster Conor has been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming... This monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.
—A Monster Calls
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A Monster Calls is a Low Fantasy children's novel by Patrick Ness from an original idea by Siobhan Dowd. Jim Kay illustrated the book, who used the more traditional ways of painting with beetles, breadboards to the more modern marks and textures.
A film adaptation was released in 2016. It was followed two years later by a play, directed by Sally Cookson, which toured the UK in 2020.
Conor is a thirteen-year-old boy living with his mother in the UK. They are very close but his mother suffers from cancer, which a string of increasingly severe treatments has failed to cure. They are frequently visited by her mother, who helps in a physical sense but is too pushy and strict to successfully bond with her grandson. Conor's father lives in the USA and is unsupportive.
Conor is bullied at school and becoming isolated from the other children. He has a recurring nightmare in which he walks with his mother in a churchyard near their house. A sink-hole opens suddenly and Conor's mother falls in. He manages to catch her hand but fails to hold her weight, and watches her face as she slips from his grasp and is lost.
One night, Conor is called to his window seven minutes after midnight by the Monster, who looks like a giant man made of tree branches. He claims to be the yew tree that grows in the nearby churchyard. The Monster tells Conor that he will visit him again and tell him three stories. He will then require one story from Conor.
The Monster's three stories feature previous times he "walked", leaving his position as an apparently normal tree to interfere with human affairs. He explains that yew trees have a long history of helping humans via folk medicine, and he chooses to walk when he senses that a person or community needs his help. However, none of the stories has a clear Aesop, unless it is that people are complicated.
After each story, Conor awakes and is left to wonder if the Monster is real. After the later visits he finds himself blamed for damage that he apparently did while dreaming about the monster, but the adults involved refrain from punishing him because they know he is distressed.
Eventually the monster confronts Conor and intimidates him into telling his own story, which is the truth he had never previously revealed. In return, the monster reveals what he can do to help.
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- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Inverted, the Yew tree is the monster's favourite form and he has no qualms about scaring Conor with this form.
- Arc Number: The book is careful to point out that the monster always visits at 12:07. Eventually we see why.
- Chaotic Good: The monster.
- Disappeared Dad: He did cross the Atlantic to visit his son, but refused to take him back and was generally too flaky to be much use.
- Exact Words: "If your mother can be healed, then the yew tree will do it."
- Good Is Not Nice: The monster.
- Not So Different: Conor's teacher does a gentle version, to his surprise.
- Or Was It a Dream?: Conor wouldn't have known the significance of the time 12:07 (see Arc Number), until the monster's last visit.
- Parting Words Regret: Conor's mother tries to avert this by telling him she understands how he feels, and he needn't worry if she dies and he can't find the right words. In the end his parting words are honest and appropriate, with a little help from the monster.
- Please Don't Leave Me: Unsurprisingly, Conor mentions a few times that he doesn't want his mother to die. When she's about to, that is.
- Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: Dealing with Conor's mother's illness eventually forces him and his grandmother to settle their differences.
- Take My Hand: Conor tries to save his mother this way in his dream.
- Tear Jerker: A child watches his mother battle an apparently terminal illness. Then there's his nightmare, the reveal about the nightmare, the monster's response, Conor's mother's advice, and his grandmother's... better stock up on tissues for this one.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: The main reason Conor realizes the monster isn't a dream is the destruction of his grandmother's living room, but his hands are bloody so it could have been him.
- When he {{spoiler|snaps and lets the monster seriously hurt Harry}, he sees the monster do it, but also feels himself do it, and the students say they see him do it. Zig Zagged?