Patrick Ness is the author of the award-winning and best-selling Chaos Walking trilogy and the critically-acclaimed novels More Than This and The Rest of Us Just Live Here. John Green has described him as "an insanely beautiful writer". He has won every major prize in children's fiction, including the Carnegie Medal twice. He lives in London.
This award-winning, uncompromising novel is a valuable read for
older children struggling to understand life's unavoidable trials.
* Time Out *
Powerfully felt, this is stylistically Ness's book, but
communicates Dowd-like wisdom. Both realistic and magical, it is a
fable about the complexity of our emotions, giving us permission to
feel anger and illuminating the nature of loss. -- Nicolette Jones
* The Sunday Times *
A Monster Calls takes Dowd's preliminary idea, and draws out of
that bud a tale that has nothing of the hybrid about it.
Received wisdom dictates that books published for children need
endings that are, if not exactly happy, then at least hopeful. A
happy ending would have been a betrayal of the kind of bracingly
honest book this is, but hope can be hard to come by in such a
story. Here the desperate honesty and refusal to compromise do
allow for a sort of brutal clarity to emerge, and from that finally
a glimpse of something like hope. Brave and beautiful, full of
compassion, A Monster Calls fuses the painful and insightful, the
simple and profound. The result trembles with life.
Award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd died of cancer before she
could write this book, but the choice of Patrick Ness (Chaos
Walking Trilogy) to take her idea and create this heartbreaking
story was inspired. It is an intensely raw but emotionally
rewarding rite-of-passage for young teenager Conor, whose divorced
mum is dying of cancer.
Using folklore stories to illustrate that good and bad are all part
of the whole, the tree monster drags the reluctant Conor to
confront his own demons and, in doing so, to face the future. The
conclusion is brave, honest and a huge release.
[...] this haunting and demanding book shines with compassion,
insight and flashes of humour and is a collaboration that
highlights the exceptional talents of Ness, Dowd and Kay. A worthy
tribute.
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
