Bonjour à vous! Cette semaine, je vous écrit à propos d’un livre qui m’a grandement touché. Ce roman se nomme « A Monster Calls » écrit par Patrick Ness. Puisque j’ai lu le livre en anglais, je me suis dit que ça serait convenable que j’écrive mon article en anglais. J’espère qu’il va vous plaire!
So here is a review of the book I so hardly want to write to you about!
Ps: my article is spoiler free!!!
You see, Friday, March 4th was my birthday, I turned 16 years old, to begin the next year of my life, my dear sister gave me a book. That book made me feel so many emotions, it changed my life. I’m talking about one of Patrick Ness’s masterpiece which is; A Monster Calls. Basically, this book is made for children, but I’d say that more than 80% of its readers are mostly adults, young adults, or teenagers. I don’t like to compare books, but if you know about the novel “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, it’s kind of the same concept. It’s a book made for kids, only, it’s primarily adults who read it because there’s a deeper sense to the book. It’s similar to that.
« A Monster Calls » really touched me. I don’t know why, but for me, it’s rare that books make me cry. It happens sometimes, but not often. But at the end of this book, I couldn’t stop my tears, I couldn’t stop crying! I looked like a mess. I simply couldn’t put the book down, it was SO captivating! Also, it’s a very short read, the book only contains 205 pages, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not as deep as an 800 pages long book could be. Patrick Ness is such a genius and talented writer that he doesn’t even need hundreds and hundreds of pages to transmit his point to us. I received “A Monster Calls” the morning of my birthday, and I finished reading it during the afternoon. A one day read! For me, it’s a record! Oh, and also, the book contains beautiful drawings in most of the pages, making this awesome novel even more touching.
Basically, this book is about a young boy named Conor, he is about 12-13 years old. He lives with his mom, who sadly has cancer. She receives treatments but it’s not going so well. We see throughout the book that Conor has problems at school, dealing with bullies who make fun of him. One night Conor dreams about a monster, but that monster is not like the one he usually sees in the “real” nightmare he constantly has. The one he sees that night wants something else from him. He wants the truth. That monster will accompany Conor trough difficult and emotionally painful situations, and maybe, will he be able to make Conor say the truth once and for all.
I don’t know if you had the sad experience of losing someone dear to you? If so, I strongly suggest “A Monster Calls”. I was a little bit reluctant to read it at first because like anyone else, I don’t like to think about sad memories of the past, and I knew that it was a book about lost, about death, about pain, about mourning somebody you love, and about living with the constant painful thought of “maybe today is the day”. You know the feeling you have when nothing is going the way you want it, but you just can’t do anything about it. THAT feeling is how I would describe, how I felt reading the book.
Do you want to know why this book made me cry? Because it helped me. It helped me realize that loosing someone you love does not mean that you’ll forget about them, and that you do not need to look nice, and fine, and happy everyday of your life, just to please the people around you, only to make them think that you’re okay. The truth is: just let it out, let it all out, hell, even scream at the top of your lungs if you need to. If you’re going thru a difficult time just stop everything right now, and BREATHE. Patrick Ness’s novel also helped me realize that time was not wasted, the people who passed away, they knew, they knew everything we didn’t say, what we didn’t have the chance to say to them, they already knew about it. So don’t torture yourself about what you didn’t have the time to say or do before it was too late because it’s okay. Just admit the truth, whatever it is, say it in your head, and you’ve already done half of the process. For the rest, time will do its job, it’ll heal.
“There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.”
– Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls
In hindsight, I strongly suggest you to go buy “A Monster Calls” by Patrick Ness, it is one of my favorite books of all time. It definitely changed me forever.
I give this book a total of 5 stars out of 5, and if I could, I’d give it even more!
Well, I hope you enjoyed this article, which was a little bit more sentimental than usual, but hey, a little change never hurt nobody am I right?! If you have thoughts about the book, or other books that you think I should read, just write a comment down below, it will be my pleasure to read it!!
Write to you soon!
Aurélie
MA CHÈRE COCCINELLE 