Book Fourteen

A Monster Calls
by Patrick Ness, inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd

I should start by acknowledging that I didn't love this book . . . until the very end.  Given the rough time I had getting into the book but how deeply affected I was by the ending, I'm having a hard time deciding how to rate it.  I think I'm going to go with four stars just beause the premise was so great, and the ending really sealed it.

Grief is a common theme in life.  Since every day, we--and the people we love--are dying just a bit, life truly has more loss than anything else.  Sometimes that loss is "easy" and sometimes it is so painful that it is hell itself. 

A Monster Calls was written by Patrick Ness based on an idea that Siobhan Dowd had as she was dying of cancer.  She didn't have a chance to finish her book, so Ness took all of her ideas and crafted his own work.  Obviously we don't have the characters and ideas that Dowd developed, nor do we know how much of this story is Ness's creation.  What we do know is that perhaps no one knows the realities of dying and saying goodbye better than someone who is in its midst.  Ness took those ideas and somehow adopted those feelings and realities, and he created a stark and beautiful portrait of a young boy learning how to say goodbye to his mom. 

The other truth about grief is that it is contradictory.  In reality, so is life.  As Ness says toward the end of the tale: "The answer is that it does not matter what you think . . . your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day.  Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary."  (p191) Isn't that the way?  Isn't that the truth about pain and loss and saying goodbye?  Our minds protect us so well, but then they let us down in the end.  Because the truth is what is, even when it doesn't make sense.