Patrick Ness - A Monster Calls

In his brief introduction to A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness tells us that the book is based upon the last idea of the late Siobhan Dowd - a winner of the Carnegie herself a couple of years previously for the superb Bog Child. He also mentions his wise choice not to try to emulate Dowd's style, but to take the original premise and put his own spin on it (the impression I got was that Dowd had completed no more than the bare bones of the idea and possibly a basic plot outline). 

This results in a book that doesn't read to me as typical of either author's output.

The plot is simple: Conor's mother is dying of a terminal illness, and he is finding it difficult to cope with. He's fell out with his best friend, he's being bullied at school, and he feels emotionally distant from his haughty grandmother and his father, who has remarried and moved to the USA. Conor is understandably angry, upset and confused as his mother gradually gets more and more ill, resulting in a number of incidents that may or may not be down to the presence and influence of the titular monster.

The monster appears outside Conor's bedroom window near the beginning of the story and shows up several other times. He tells Conor three stories that raise a number of questions regarding our perceptions of the characters and the moral choices they make. The monster encourages Conor, at times, to behave in ways disturbing and destructive to the people around him, before its true purpose is revealed at the end of the story.

This is the only book to have received both the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway (the equivalent medal for illustration) in the same year. The version I bought was the cheaper, text-only version, although I did have a quick glance at Jim Kay's dark, atmospheric illustrations and was impressed with what they added to Ness' work.

Patrick Ness is one of the best writers of young adult fiction of his generation, and like all his work, A Monster Calls is brisk, engaging and adds just enough description and character quirks without it overshadowing the story. Compared to the scope and emotional heft of Dowd's Bog Child and Ness' own Chaos Walking trilogy, though, A Monster Calls feels somewhat slight to me in comparison. I've lost a parent myself and was expecting to be reduced to floods of tears at the end, but the story is too brief and Conor's other issues too quickly resolved in order for me to engage with his character as fully as I needed in order for the end of the story to have the powerful emotional pull that I thought it would. As sad as the ending was, it didn't quite have the emotional impact that I thought it should have done.

I also couldn't help wondering what Siobhan Dowd would have done with this story had she been able to complete it herself - I'm fairly sure the plot might have gone down something of a different path to the one Ness chose. The emotional impact of a powerful writer such as Dowd writing about a woman dying as this was happening to her personally might have carried a weight and substance that Ness, for all his undoubted and innate skills as an author, wasn't quite able to conjure up.

A Monster Calls is as well-written, polished and professional as you would expect from two such talented writers, but the overall sum of its parts is somewhat less than either author's best work.