A Monster Calls

Conor O'Malley is thirteen years old, and his mother is dying.

That's the simple truth at the heart of this story, but nothing else about it is simple. Conor's mother has been sick for over a year, undergoing treatments for an unnamed illness. And Conor has been holding things together—the household chores, the laundry, the dishes, the brave face. He wakes up each morning, makes his own breakfast, and gets himself to school. He does all of this because his mother is too tired from her treatments, and because he believes that if he just keeps everything running smoothly, maybe things will be okay.

But every night, Conor has the same nightmare. The one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. The one he has told no one about. Not his mother, not his father who lives in America, not his grandmother, not a single person at school. This nightmare is his deepest secret, a source of shame so powerful that he carries it alone.

Then one night, everything changes.

Conor wakes at exactly 12:07 am. He hears someone calling his name. Looking out his window, he sees the ancient yew tree on the hill behind his house begin to transform. The tree twists and reshapes itself into a humanoid monster, ancient and wild, with "a monstrous quality, wild and untamed." The monster walks to Conor's bedroom window, smashes through the wall, and opens its mouth to eat Conor alive.

Here's the strange thing: Conor isn't afraid. When the monster demands to know why, Conor simply says, "I've seen worse." The monster promises that Conor will learn to be afraid of him in time.

This monster claims to be an ancient being who "does not often come walking... only for matters of life and death." It tells Conor that it will share three stories with him. After those three tales, Conor must tell the monster a fourth story: the truth of what happens in his nightmare.

Conor refuses. The monster eats him alive again.

When Conor wakes the next morning, he finds his bedroom floor covered in yew tree leaves. The monster, it seems, is real.

This is the framework of Patrick Ness's novel *A Monster Calls*—a story about a boy, a monster, and the painful truth that lies buried beneath grief, anger, and shame. The book was originally conceived by the late Siobhan Dowd, who passed away from breast cancer in 2007, and Ness wrote it in her memory. It won both the Carnegie Medal and the Greenway Medal in 2012, the first book ever to win both awards simultaneously.

But what kind of story is this really? On the surface, it's a fantasy about a mythical creature visiting a troubled boy. But the monster isn't here to destroy or to punish. It's here to guide Conor through something he cannot face alone: the messy, terrifying, contradictory process of losing someone you love.

The novel explores terminal illness, grief, anger, guilt, and acceptance through a child's eyes, weaving in elements of English mythology. The yew tree itself carries deep meaning—in England, yew trees are called "graveyard trees" because they grow on burial grounds, but they're also used in modern medicine to treat cancer. The tree that could heal can also kill. The monster that terrifies can also comfort.

Conor's world is already cracking before the monster arrives. At school, he's isolated. His only friend Lily told everyone about his mother's illness, and now the other students treat him like he's made of glass—or worse, like he's invisible. A bully named Harry torments him, and Conor takes the abuse without fighting back. His father lives in America with a new family and barely visits. His grandmother, who Conor views as fussy and controlling, keeps hovering, hinting at a future Conor refuses to imagine: life after his mother.

The monster's first appearance shatters Conor's carefully maintained denial. When it smashes through his wall and eats him alive, Conor feels no fear because he's already living in a nightmare. But the monster sees something Conor cannot—that the real nightmare isn't the one with darkness and screaming. The real nightmare is the truth Conor refuses to speak: that his mother is dying, and part of him wants the pain to end.

The monster promises three tales. Each one will challenge everything Conor believes about good and evil, fairness and punishment, love and letting go. Each one will push him closer to the confession he dreads most.

And after the third tale, Conor must tell the fourth.

The truth of what happens in his nightmare.

What could be so terrible that a thirteen-year-old boy would rather be eaten alive than speak it?