-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd
by Patrick Ness, Siobhan Dowd
Book Reviewed by:An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor.
At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting - he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd - whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself - Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined. (Ages 12+)
Chapter 1
A Monster Calls
The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do.
Conor was awake when it came.
He'd had a nightmare. Well, not a nightmare. The nightmare.
The one he'd been having a lot lately. The one with the darkness
and the wind and the screaming. The one with the hands slipping
from his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to hold on.
The one that always ended with -
"Go away," Conor whispered into the darkness of his bedroom,
trying to push the nightmare back, not let it follow him into the
world of waking. "Go away now."
He glanced over at the clock his mum had put on his bedside
table. 12:07. Seven minutes past midnight. Which was late for a
school night, late for a Sunday, certainly.
He'd told no one about the nightmare. Not his mum,
obviously, but no one else either, not his dad in their
fortnightly (or so) phone call, definitely not his grandma,
and no one at school. Absolutely not.
What happened in the nightmare was something no one
...
Patrick Ness's expansion and completion of Siobhan Dowd's story concept, in conjunction with Jim Kay's gorgeous illustrations, unite to form one of the best novels I have read this year. The book is further proof that the young adult market is enticing some of today's most talented writers. Yes, A Monster Calls is a narrative filled with magic, but the meaning behind that magic extends way beyond a traditional fantasy narrative...continued
Full Review
(535 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Stacey Brownlie).
Meg Rosoff
Patrick Ness has turned his exceptional talent to the subject of loss... This is storytelling as it should be (and almost never is) - harrowing, lyrical, and transcendent. Philip Pullman
Powerful and impressive. The story behind the book is fascinating and moving too, the idea coming to life in the safe hands of Patrick Ness - a vivid example of how stories live on.The seed for A Monster Calls came from Siobhan Dowd (pronounced sh-vawn), a gifted writer who earned critical and popular success for her young adult fiction and received much praise for her work speaking out against censorship. She brought authors into underprivileged schools, made literature accessible to children around the globe, and led numerous community projects.
Her first novel, A Swift Pure Cry (2006), was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and the BookTrust Teenage Prize, and her subsequent novels - The London Eye Mystery (2007), Bog Child (2008), and Solace of the Road (2009) - have earned her dozens of awards.
Dowd spent much of her career working for both the English and American branches of PEN ("poets/...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked A Monster Calls, try these:
by Tommy Wallach
Published 2017
Tommy Wallach, the New York Times bestselling author of the "stunning debut" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) We All Looked Up, delivers a brilliant new novel about a young man who overcomes a crippling loss and finds the courage to live after meeting an enigmatic girl.
The Still Point of the Turning World
by Emily Rapp Black
Published 2014
The Still Point of the Turning World is the story of a mother's journey through grief and beyond it, re-examining our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be a good parent, to be a success, and to live a meaningful life.
The Fairbanks Four
by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue
One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.
One Death at a Time
by Abbi Waxman
A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.
Happy Land
by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.
The Seven O'Clock Club
by Amelia Ireland
Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.
.gif)
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!