SuitabookA Monster Calls
Patrick Ness
- Reading
- Read alongside the book if grief or illness feels especially close. Pause after the monster’s tales to discuss competing perspectives, and allow quiet time afterwards rather than expecting an immediate response.
- Themes
- Grief and contradictory feelings: Conor faces his mother’s terminal illness while struggling with fear, shame, anger and feelings he would rather hide. The novel treats grief as complicated rather than purely sorrowful, giving space to conflicting emotions without presenting Conor as simply good or bad.
- Stories and ambiguity: A yew-tree monster tells three unsettling tales and demands a truth from Conor. The tales resist simple moral lessons: culpability and justice are described as complicated, while the monster’s reality remains deliberately uncertain.
- Family and social isolation: Conor is bullied at school and lives amid a caring but strained family situation, with a distant father, grandmother and loyal friend Lily. The surrounding adults are portrayed as limited rather than wholly heroic or villainous, while friendship offers loyalty within Conor’s isolation.
- Worth knowing
- Consider whether the reader would welcome sustained emotional intensity. The book includes a parent’s terminal illness, bereavement-related distress, bullying, fighting with injury, destructive behaviour, a threatening monster and a briefly mentioned murder.