A Review of 'A Monster Calls' by Patrick Ness (Audio Book)

"The monster showed up after midnight.  As they do.

But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting.  He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming...

This monster is something different, though.  Something ancient, something wild.  And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth."

After finishing this book, I started thinking about a boy and his father.  Cameron and his father Henry.  Cameron had a type of cancer called Anaplastic Astrocytoma.  Put simply, he had a malignant brain tumor.  I didn't know Cameron personally, nor did I know his father, but my mom was in one of his father's productions through her work.  When she found out about his son, she told me and I started following his CaringBridge website from essentially the beginning.  I read about his ups and his downs, I read about the different things he did in his short lifetime and how he truly wanted to make a difference in the world.  In the few weeks leading up to his death, I remember his father posting on the CaringBridge website about how he told Cameron that is was okay to let go.  He was giving his son permission to die, to leave his weary body and move on.

This story, "A Monster Calls," is about a boy and his mother.  Instead of the boy, Conor, having cancer, it's his mother who has a type of cancer that is never specifically revealed to us.  I think Conor was thirteen, as Cameron was when he passed away.

This book is about letting go, even if you don't want to.  It certainly doesn't seem like that is what it'll be about when you start reading/listening to this book, but it becomes clearer as you keep listening.

'A Monster Calls' is wonderfully written.  Patrick Ness did a wonderful job using the details left behind by Siobhan Dowd and weaving them into this story.  I look forward to reading more of his work as well as Siobhan's work.

I give 'A Monster Calls':

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude