Prize-winning Patrick Ness displays brilliant new skills of sensitivity in this hauntingly touching story of how a boy deals with the looming threat of his mother’s death from cancer. Haunted by a monster in his dreams, denied much information by his family and treated as a weirdo by his class mates and a ‘special case’ by his teachers, Conor struggles to get to grips with the devastating emotions which threaten to overwhelm him.
How he finds the courage and strength to face the end when it happens is both utterly shattering and deeply satisfying. Costa Award winner Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final idea of much-loved Carnegie Medal winner Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself.
Rachel Levy chair of the 2012 CILIP Carnegie judging panel said: "A Monster Calls" is an exquisite piece of writing. It is a beautifully economical, structurally brilliant and lyrically descriptive account of a challenging episode in one child's life."
Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window, but it's not the one he's been expecting.
This one is ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.
Best-selling novelist Patrick Ness takes the final idea of award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd - whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself - and weaves a tale of heartbreak, healing, and mischief, and above all, of the courage it takes to face the truth.
“Exceptional….shines with compassion” - Daily Mail
“Perhaps the most hard-hitting, touching and beautiful book I have read ever.” - Empire of Books
“Outstanding…gripping, moving” - The Times
“Wise, darkly funny and brave” - New York Times
“One of the best books I’ve read in years. Unless you want to be seen bawling on public transport, read it at home” – Good Reads
“Quite simply one of the defining books of its generation” – Rachel Levy, CILIP
Author
About Patrick Ness
Patrick Ness was born on an army base called Fort Belvoir, near Alexandria, Virginia, in the United States. His father was a drill sergeant in the US Army. He lived in Hawaii until he was almost six, spent the ten years after that in suburban Washington state, and then on to Los Angeles, where he studied English Literature at the University of Southern California.
His main job after graduating was as corporate writer at a cable company, writing manuals, form letters and speeches and once even an advertisement for the Gilroy, California Garlic Festival (this is true). If you're American and hated your cable company, he probably wrote you a letter of apology.
He got his first story published in Genre magazine in 1997 and was working on his first novel when he moved to London in 1999. He's lived here ever since. Sometimes he teaches creative writing but mostly he tries to write 1,000 words a day, 'come hell or high water'.
In May 2008, he published The Knife of Never Letting Go, his first book for young adults. It won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize and he hasn't looked back since. Click here to read a Q&A with Patrick.
10 Things You Didn't Know About Patrick Ness
1. He has a tattoo of a rhinoceros. 2. He has run two marathons. 3. He is a certified scuba diver. 4. He wrote a radio comedy about vampires. 5. He has never been to New York City but... 6. He has been to Sydney, Auckland and Tokyo. 7. He got accepted into film school but turned it down to study writing. 8. He was a goth as a teenager (well, as much of a goth as you could be in Tacoma, Washington and still have to go to church every Sunday). 9. He is no longer a goth. 10. Under no circumstances will he eat onions.
