A wise tale about grief
By Jessica Bruder |
October 21, 2011, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
WHEN I opened the envelope on my doorstep containing this book, I immediately had to sit down. "A Monster Calls" is about coming to terms with grief. And it is based on the last story idea from my first mentor: brassy, big-hearted Siobhan Dowd, then a human rights campaigner, who was kind - or crazy - enough to hire me as an intern in 1997 when I was 18 years old. She died four years ago from breast cancer at the age of 47.
Along with my sadness and guilt - I learned of her death only by opening that envelope and, yes, I cried - came memories. There was Dowd's big desk at the PEN American Center. Her brilliant letters on behalf of authors imprisoned around the world. Her favorite places for dumplings in Chinatown. She was the kind of person who could turn a kid into a colleague.
I suspect that's how she managed to reach so many young people. After two decades working in human rights, Dowd began writing novels for young adults.
Two were released during her lifetime, starting with "A Swift Pure Cry" in 2006, and two, including "Bog Child," which won the Carnegie Medal in 2009, appeared posthumously.
One story remained untold. Dowd had planted the seeds for a new project: an illustrated work about a yew tree with healing powers and a young boy coping with his mother's terminal cancer. After Dowd died, her editor shared the idea with Patrick Ness, author of the "Chaos Walking" trilogy.
The two writers had never met, and their voices couldn't be more dissimilar. Could Ness finish what Dowd had begun?
Ness took the idea as a springboard, rather than as marching orders. The result is all his own, and it's powerful medicine: a story that lodges in your bones and stays there.
It opens in England with Conor O'Malley, 13, a boy whose recurring dream always ends in terror: His mother slips from his grasp, lost forever. His waking life isn't much better. He's a pinata for bullies, an object of scrutiny for his bossy grandmother and mostly ignored by his father, who lives in America with a new wife and baby. Meanwhile, Conor's mother is dying, and everyone at school knows it. Classmates give him a wide berth. Teachers address him in voices dripping with pity.
So when a monster - a wild, elemental beast with the limbs of a yew tree - summons Conor from his bedroom window one night, the boy is nonplused. "Shout all you want," he replies, shrugging. "I've seen worse."
In later visits, the monster tells Conor three parables. Unlike the traditional folktales whose form they echo, the monster's stories are messy. They're full of tough decisions, unexpected outcomes and imperfect characters beyond the neat archetypes of good and evil.
Conor dreads what will happen after he hears the third and final story because the monster has warned him that when the telling is done, Conor must speak his own tale: "Not just any truth. Your truth."
Otherwise, the beast will eat him alive. There's no denying it: This is one profoundly sad story. But it's also wise, darkly funny and brave.
Along with my sadness and guilt - I learned of her death only by opening that envelope and, yes, I cried - came memories. There was Dowd's big desk at the PEN American Center. Her brilliant letters on behalf of authors imprisoned around the world. Her favorite places for dumplings in Chinatown. She was the kind of person who could turn a kid into a colleague.
I suspect that's how she managed to reach so many young people. After two decades working in human rights, Dowd began writing novels for young adults.
Two were released during her lifetime, starting with "A Swift Pure Cry" in 2006, and two, including "Bog Child," which won the Carnegie Medal in 2009, appeared posthumously.
One story remained untold. Dowd had planted the seeds for a new project: an illustrated work about a yew tree with healing powers and a young boy coping with his mother's terminal cancer. After Dowd died, her editor shared the idea with Patrick Ness, author of the "Chaos Walking" trilogy.
The two writers had never met, and their voices couldn't be more dissimilar. Could Ness finish what Dowd had begun?
Ness took the idea as a springboard, rather than as marching orders. The result is all his own, and it's powerful medicine: a story that lodges in your bones and stays there.
It opens in England with Conor O'Malley, 13, a boy whose recurring dream always ends in terror: His mother slips from his grasp, lost forever. His waking life isn't much better. He's a pinata for bullies, an object of scrutiny for his bossy grandmother and mostly ignored by his father, who lives in America with a new wife and baby. Meanwhile, Conor's mother is dying, and everyone at school knows it. Classmates give him a wide berth. Teachers address him in voices dripping with pity.
So when a monster - a wild, elemental beast with the limbs of a yew tree - summons Conor from his bedroom window one night, the boy is nonplused. "Shout all you want," he replies, shrugging. "I've seen worse."
In later visits, the monster tells Conor three parables. Unlike the traditional folktales whose form they echo, the monster's stories are messy. They're full of tough decisions, unexpected outcomes and imperfect characters beyond the neat archetypes of good and evil.
Conor dreads what will happen after he hears the third and final story because the monster has warned him that when the telling is done, Conor must speak his own tale: "Not just any truth. Your truth."
Otherwise, the beast will eat him alive. There's no denying it: This is one profoundly sad story. But it's also wise, darkly funny and brave.
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