Monday Musings: A Monster Calls Review
Last week I picked up a book I'd heard about but never looked into for myself: A Monster Calls . I'd recently bought a copy at our local used book store and after some rousing recommendations from friends I decided I wanted to read it sooner rather than later. Reader beware: SPOILERS abound. It's the movie cover, but it's gorgeous and it's the copy I read. A Monster Calls has one of the best opening lines I've read in a while: "The monster shows up just after midnight. As they do." (Apparently, this is something of a trope in stories now; follow-up a sentence about extraordinary things with the statement "as you/they do" as though it's perfectly normal. I've heard it used that way in real life, but this was the first time I encountered it in fiction.) From there we're introduced to Conor, a 13-year-old boy with a cancer-stricken mum (this is the UK after all) and a recurring nightmare whose ending he won't even l...