Capítulo 1
When the Yew Tree Comes Walking
In a world where adults struggle to discuss death with children, Patrick Ness's "A Monster Calls" stands as a remarkable exception. This haunting tale-originally conceived by Siobhan Dowd before her own death from cancer-has become a modern classic, praised by critics and beloved by readers of all ages. The novel won unprecedented dual Carnegie Medals for both writing and illustration, was adapted into a critically acclaimed film starring Liam Neeson as the monster, and continues to appear on reading lists for its profound exploration of grief. What makes this story so powerful is not just its unflinching look at loss, but the way it validates the complex, contradictory emotions that accompany watching someone you love suffer. Through the ancient wisdom of a yew tree monster, we learn that sometimes the most terrifying truths are the ones we hide from ourselves.
Capítulo 2
The Midnight Visitor
Thirteen-year-old Conor O'Malley lies awake in his bed when the monster comes calling at precisely 12:07 AM. He's been having the same nightmare again - a recurring terror of overwhelming darkness, howling wind, desperate screaming, and hands slipping inexorably from his grasp. The dream has become so familiar that he can sense its approach like an unwelcome visitor. When he hears his name called from the garden, each syllable resonating with ancient power, he approaches his bedroom window with a mix of dread and resignation, only to witness an impossible transformation: the ancient yew tree that has stood in the churchyard for centuries has uprooted itself and taken a terrifying new form.
The monster's appearance is both magnificent and horrifying - a colossal figure towering above the house, its massive form sculpted from twisted wood and shadow. Its face emerges from gnarled branches that writhe and reshape themselves like living serpents, while its muscular arms are fashioned from thick, rope-like limbs that could uproot oak trees. Its skin is an intricate tapestry of thousands of needle-like leaves that rustle with every movement, creating an eerie whispered chorus. When it speaks, its voice resonates deep enough to rattle windows and shake dust from the ceiling, declaring with thunderous authority that it has "come to get him."
Conor's reaction defies all expectation. Instead of terror, his face shows only weary disappointment. This walking nightmare of bark and branches isn't the monster that truly haunts him - it's not the creature from his recurring dream that fills him with genuine dread. His blase response infuriates the ancient being, leading to a confrontation where Conor actually challenges its power, displaying a courage born not of bravery but of having already faced worse horrors.
The monster responds by seizing him in its enormous wooden hand, lifting him high above the garden while promising in words that seem to emanate from the earth itself that Conor will indeed know fear "before the end." The last image Conor registers is the monster's maw opening impossibly wide, revealing a darkness deeper than night itself. When morning arrives, the encounter seems to have been merely a dream - except for the suspicious scatter of yew tree leaves across his bedroom floor, and the lingering scent of earth and ancient wood.
This midnight visitation establishes the novel's central tension with masterful subtlety. Conor stands caught between two monsters: the ancient yew tree that will serve as an unlikely guide through his emotional journey, forcing him to confront painful truths he's been avoiding, and the other, more terrifying creature that haunts his recurring nightmare - a manifestation of his deepest fears and unspoken truths. The yew tree monster, drawing on centuries of folklore where yew trees symbolize both death and healing, appears at precisely the moment when Conor needs guidance most - when his mother's cancer treatments are failing and the adults in his life dance around hard truths with well-meaning but suffocating protection. The significance of 12:07, that liminal moment when night begins its slow transformation into morning, creates a magical space where reality and fantasy interweave, allowing painful truths to finally emerge from shadows both literal and metaphorical.
Capítulo 3
A Life Coming Apart
Conor's daily existence is unraveling thread by thread, each day bringing new challenges that chip away at his familiar world. His mother, once vibrant and full of life - the kind of person who would spontaneously dance in the kitchen while making dinner or spend hours creating elaborate bedtime stories - is now gaunt and weakened by aggressive cancer treatments. Her scalp, once crowned with thick dark hair, is bare from chemotherapy, and her formerly bright eyes are dulled by constant pain she tries to hide. Their roles have reversed dramatically: thirteen-year-old Conor now prepares his own breakfast, manages the laundry, and tries to care for her, though she maintains a brave facade, insisting everything will be fine even as her voice grows weaker.
When she announces his grandmother is coming to stay, Conor bristles with immediate resistance. His grandmother, with her perfectly tailored suits, precise schedule, and rigid ways, represents everything unlike the warm, creative home he shares with his mother. Her pristine house in London, with its white carpets and delicate decorative plates, stands in stark contrast to their cozy cottage filled with his mother's paintings and their shared memories.
School has become a daily exercise in isolation. Since Lily Andrews told everyone about his mother's illness a year ago - a betrayal that still stings - Conor has become invisible in a particularly cruel way. Teachers look at him with sad eyes but say nothing meaningful, awkwardly avoiding any mention of his situation while simultaneously treating him with kid gloves. Former friends cross the hallway to avoid him, as if grief might be contagious, leaving conspicuous empty seats beside him in class. Only Harry, the school bully, acknowledges him - through calculated torment that has become almost ritualistic. They maintain a strange "understanding" where Harry is the only one allowed to touch him, to punch him, to make him feel something real in a world that has become increasingly surreal. These violent encounters have become Conor's anchor to reality, painful proof that he still exists in a world where everyone else treats him like a ghost.
His father provides little comfort, having built a new life in America complete with a new wife and baby daughter. He visits briefly when summoned by Conor's mother, but can offer only awkward platitudes and the hollow promise that Conor can "visit sometime." The distance between them grows with every forced conversation over pizza, every unanswered question about what will happen when - not if - Conor's mother doesn't get better. Their relationship has become a series of uncomfortable silences and avoided topics.
Throughout it all, Conor maintains a desperate denial that becomes more elaborate with each passing day. When his mother admits her latest treatment isn't working but promises they'll try something else, he clings to this increasingly thin hope like a lifeline. When his grandmother speaks of practical arrangements for "afterward," he physically leaves the room, refusing to hear words that make the future too real. When his father avoids discussing what's coming, Conor fills the silence with increasingly detailed fantasies of moving to America, creating an alternate reality where everything works out fine.
The monster's arrival - emerging from an ancient yew tree at precisely 12:07 - violently punctures this carefully maintained denial. It promises no easy comfort, no simple solutions, only stories that will lead Conor to his own devastating truth. As the yew tree tells him, in its ancient, terrible voice, "Stories are wild creatures. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they may wreak?" This warning serves as both promise and threat, suggesting that the truth Conor has been avoiding will finally demand to be heard.
Capítulo 4
Tales of Moral Complexity
The monster's stories form the philosophical heart of the novel, each one challenging Conor's expectations and understanding of the world. Far from the simple moral fables he expects, these tales are complex, ambiguous, and often disturbing-much like life itself.
In the first tale, the monster describes an ancient kingdom where a young prince falls in love with a farmer's daughter against his stepmother's wishes. When the prince finds his beloved murdered beneath a yew tree, he blames the queen and summons the monster to help overthrow her. The villagers capture the queen to burn her at the stake-but here the story takes an unexpected turn. The monster reveals it saved the queen, carrying her to safety in a distant land. When Conor protests that the monster saved a murderer, it reveals a shocking truth: the prince himself killed the farmer's daughter to incite rebellion against the queen. Despite this deception, the prince became a beloved king who ruled happily for many years.
Conor is bewildered by this moral ambiguity. "So the good prince was a murderer and the evil queen wasn't a witch after all. Is that supposed to be the lesson of all this? That I should be nice to her? Is that why you made this story up?"
The monster laughs at Conor's simplistic interpretation: "You think I tell you stories to teach you lessons? You think I have come walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?"
The second tale proves equally subversive. It tells of a bitter apothecary who needed the healing properties of a yew tree growing on a parson's land. The parson refused to let him cut it down and preached against the apothecary's old ways of medicine. When the parson's two daughters fell deathly ill, he finally offered the apothecary anything-the yew tree, sermons in his favor-if he would save his daughters. The apothecary refused, saying if the parson would abandon his beliefs so quickly, there was nothing he could do. Both daughters died, and the monster came walking to destroy the parson's home.
Again, Conor is outraged by the moral complexity. Why punish the parson rather than the apothecary who refused to help dying children? The monster explains that the parson was the true villain-a man who lived on belief but sacrificed it at the first challenge, exactly when he needed it most. "If he believed he was right, he should have had the courage to continue believing."
These tales serve as mirrors reflecting Conor's own situation. Like the characters in the monster's stories, he is trapped in moral complexity-loving his mother while secretly wishing for an end to her suffering, wanting truth while clinging to comforting lies. The stories prepare him to face his own contradictory feelings without judgment, teaching him that humans are complex creatures capable of holding opposing truths simultaneously.
Capítulo 5
The Invisible Boy
As his mother's condition worsens, Conor becomes increasingly isolated. At school, he exists in a painful limbo-not quite bullied in the traditional sense, but subjected to something perhaps more cruel: deliberate invisibility.
Harry, the school bully, orchestrates this torment with chilling precision. After years of physical bullying, he shifts to a more sophisticated psychological torture. "I no longer see you," Harry declares, shaking Conor's hand in mock civility before walking away. His cronies follow suit, treating Conor as if he doesn't exist. Even teachers participate unwittingly, making "allowances" for Conor's situation by not calling on him in class or demanding homework.
This invisibility extends beyond school. His grandmother, overwhelmed with her daughter's illness, interacts with Conor mechanically-driving him to school, picking him up, taking him to the hospital-but rarely truly sees him. His father, during his brief visit from America, looks at Conor but doesn't really see his pain or needs. Even his mother, lost in her own suffering and the fog of pain medication, can't fully see him anymore.
The monster's third tale speaks directly to this invisibility. It tells of an invisible man "who had grown tired of being unseen." As the monster explains, the man wasn't actually invisible-people had just become used to not seeing him. His solution was to "make them see me" by calling for a monster.
This tale catalyzes Conor's violent outburst against Harry. When Harry taunts him about wanting punishment because of some terrible secret, Conor-with the monster's voice joining his own-brutally attacks him. The monster pounds Harry until he begs for mercy, repeating "Never invisible again" with each blow.
The attack lands Harry in the hospital with broken bones and teeth. Witnesses saw Conor acting alone, though he insists the monster did it. Despite school rules dictating immediate exclusion, the Headmistress refuses to punish him because of his "special circumstances"-crushing Conor, who desperately wanted consequences. As the monster warned, he is no longer invisible, but further away than ever.
This episode reveals Conor's desperate need to be seen-truly seen-in his pain and confusion. Not with pity or special allowances, but with honest acknowledgment of his complex emotions. The violence against Harry represents Conor's rage against a world that refuses to see him clearly or speak truth to him. It's only when Lily passes him a note saying "I see you" with the "I" underlined repeatedly that Conor feels a genuine connection with another person.
Capítulo 6
The Healing Tree
In a cruel twist of fate, Conor learns that his mother's new treatment is medicine derived from yew trees - the very species that has been visiting him as a monster. This connection ignites desperate hope in Conor. Could the monster have come walking to heal his mother with medicine from its own substance? The coincidence seems too profound to be meaningless, and Conor begins researching everything he can about yew trees and their medicinal properties, desperately seeking confirmation of his hopes.
The yew tree has a rich symbolic history as both poison and medicine, dating back to ancient Celtic and Norse mythology where it represented both death and eternal life. Its berries and needles contain taxanes, compounds highly toxic to humans - capable of stopping a heart within hours - yet these same compounds have become valuable chemotherapy drugs, particularly in treating breast and ovarian cancers. This duality - that something can be simultaneously deadly and healing - mirrors the central paradox of Conor's emotional journey and reflects the complex nature of cancer treatment itself, where poison is used to heal.
When Conor confronts the monster about healing his mother, it responds cryptically: "If your mother can be healed, then the yew tree will do it." This ambiguous answer feeds Conor's hope while carefully avoiding any promises. But as his mother's condition deteriorates despite the new medicine, with an infection in her lungs and increased pain keeping her either asleep or confused from painkillers, Conor must face the devastating possibility that she cannot be healed. He watches helplessly as the treatment that was supposed to save her seems to drain her remaining strength, much like the poisonous nature of the yew tree itself.
In their final conversation before "the talk," Conor's mother reflects on this paradox while looking out her hospital window: "Isn't it amazing how the green things of this world can be the most destructive, and the most healing?" She finds comfort in the connection between her treatment and the yew tree visible from their house, seeing it as a sign of hope - a physical reminder of the medicine flowing through her veins. When Conor asks directly if the medicine will save her, she smiles and says, "I hope so. I believe so." Her words carry the weight of someone trying to believe in possibility while facing harsh reality.
But the monster has not come to heal Conor's mother. When he rages at the yew tree for failing to save her, attacking its bark legs and demanding to know what use it is, the monster lifts him up and reveals its true purpose: "I did not come to heal her. I came to heal you." The scene unfolds with devastating clarity as Conor's physical assault on the monster reflects his internal struggle with truth and denial.
This revelation shifts the novel's focus from physical healing to emotional healing. The monster has come to help Conor process his grief and guilt, to guide him through the terrible truth he has been avoiding - that sometimes love means letting go. The yew tree, as both poison and medicine, becomes the perfect vehicle for this journey - offering bitter truth that hurts terribly yet ultimately heals. Like the chemotherapy derived from its bark, the monster's lessons are painful but necessary for survival and healing.
Capítulo 7
The Nightmare Truth
At the heart of Conor's suffering lies a recurring nightmare-one far more terrifying than the yew tree monster. In this dream, he stands in a dark clearing beside a cliff edge where his mother stands. A rumbling announces the arrival of a "real monster"-a terrifying creature of cloud, ash, and dark flames that reaches up from below the cliff to grab his mother.
Conor rushes forward to catch her hands as she's pulled over the edge. This is the moment that wakes him screaming every night-desperately holding his mother's hands while the nightmare monster pulls her down. Despite his efforts, she grows impossibly heavy, and he cannot maintain his grip.
The monster forces Conor to relive this nightmare and speak the truth he's been hiding: "I can't stand it any more! I can't stand knowing that she'll go! I just want it to be over!" This confession-that part of him wishes for his mother's suffering to end, even if it means losing her-is the painful truth he's been avoiding.
This admission feels like betrayal to Conor. How could he wish, even for a moment, for his mother's death? The guilt has been consuming him, making him feel deserving of punishment. It's why he welcomed Harry's bullying and was disappointed when the Headmistress wouldn't expel him after the attack. He believes he deserves to suffer for this terrible thought.
But the monster offers a different perspective: "You were merely wishing for the end of pain. Your own pain. It is the most human wish of all." It explains that humans are complicated creatures, capable of contradictory feelings: desperately wanting his mother saved while simultaneously wanting her suffering to end.
"Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary," the monster tells him. "And your mind will punish you for believing both."
This insight-that contradictory feelings can coexist without one negating the other-provides Conor with the emotional framework he needs to face his mother's death. He can love her desperately while also acknowledging the relief that will come when her suffering ends. He can wish for miraculous healing while preparing for inevitable loss. These aren't betrayals but natural, human responses to an impossible situation.
The monster's wisdom culminates in a simple yet profound truth: "You do not write your life with words. You write it with actions." Speaking the truth was the action Conor needed to take-not to change the outcome, but to change how he experiences it.
Capítulo 8
The Final Letting Go
In the novel's climactic scene, Conor sits beside his mother's hospital bed, feeling the monster's hands on his shoulders, holding him up. "All you have to do is tell the truth," the monster says. The clock reads 11:46 p.m.-twenty-one minutes before 12:07, the time the monster always appears.
Though afraid, Conor moves toward his mother as the monster guides him. He takes her hand as she briefly opens her eyes. In this moment, he realizes two truths simultaneously: his mother's death is inevitable, but he will survive it. This is why the monster came-his need had called it.
"I don't want you to go," Conor finally says, tears flowing freely. "I know, my love," his mother replies. He leans forward and puts his arm around her, holding tightly. The monster whispers that the moment will come when she slips away, "But not this moment. Not just yet."
This scene represents the emotional resolution of Conor's journey. By acknowledging both his desire for his mother to live and his acceptance that she will die, he achieves a kind of peace. The monster has taught him that he can hold these contradictory feelings without being torn apart by them.
The novel's final message is both heartbreaking and hopeful: by holding tightly to his mother in her final moments, Conor can finally let her go. This paradox-that we must fully embrace our loved ones to properly release them-captures the essence of healthy grief. It's not about "moving on" or "getting over it," but about integrating the loss into our ongoing lives.
Through Conor's journey, we learn that stories-even painful ones-have tremendous power to heal. The monster's tales, with their moral complexity and refusal to offer simple answers, prepare Conor to face his own complicated truth. By speaking that truth aloud, he breaks its power over him. The nightmare that has haunted him loses its grip when brought into the light.
In the end, "A Monster Calls" offers no false comfort about death. Instead, it provides something more valuable: permission to feel the full spectrum of emotions that accompany loss, without judgment or shame. It acknowledges that grief is messy, contradictory, and often ugly-yet ultimately survivable. By walking with Conor through his darkest moment, we learn that sometimes the most monstrous-seeming truths, when finally faced, are the very ones that set us free.
