A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Recommended.

I’ll be reviewing Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls in greater depth for Strange Horizons a bit closer to its publication date, but I wanted to collect a few thoughts here.

Conor’s mother has cancer. His dad is busy overseas tending to his new family. That leaves just Conor, his mum, and the yew tree in the backyard. And then Conor’s mom’s health takes a turn for the worse, his grandmother comes to visit, and a monster comes to call.

This is a very difficult book for me to approach or even discuss. My own father died when I was eight after protracted illness, both mental and physical. He took a trip to visit his brother in Tennessee and never came back. I have a letter from him from one of his stints in the hospital. He said when he got out, we’d plant a tree together, watch some cartoons. That never happened.

My mother was lost in her grief. My sister, thirteen, plunged into her own personal darkness. For years, it seemed like I stayed afloat pretty well. I cried a bit, sure, but mostly I was a sunny kid, who comforted the other grieving members of my family and went about my own business, drawing pictures, reading books, playing in the backyard until the sun faded.

Until puberty struck with a vengeance. I hadn’t even known how angry I was until I began to break things. Kicking the vacuum cleaner. Tossing my mother’s flower pots on the ground, shattering the terracotta. Punching holes in the wall. Hitting my head against the brown grubby carpet in my bedroom over and over again.

My story isn’t Conor’s story. That’s the thing about grief. Even though it’s universal–we’ll either die first ourselves (and then, what’s the use of worrying?), or we’ll all face the death of a parent someday. We will all feel that loss, how it cuts to the bone. We’ll be left to rage against the dying of the light no matter how gently those we loved slipped away from us.

But it’s so deeply personal, too. No two stories about grief can ever be the same. Because grief is a greedy, selfish monster. It makes you so aware of yourself, of how your own body remains vital even when everything falls apart. And when a family is grieving, even together, it becomes impossible to really reach out through the interminable black, to make contact, to find commonalities. Because no matter how much you share with them, you are yourself, indivisible, and alone.

This is quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read about grief. Yes, it’s a simple book. But it’s not a simplistic book. It’s an honest book, a true book, a hard book; it made me sob, hiccuping great big tears. If you’ve ever lost someone you cared about, you need this book. And if you haven’t yet? Well then, lucky you. But just you wait–someday, you’ll need it too.

A review copy of this volume was generously provided by the publisher for review purposes.

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I finished this painting a few nights ago. I was working on it, very sporadically, for probably about six months. Still, I’m pretty happy with the result.

It’s based on a photo from a book I got from a used book sale–Foods of the World: Cooking of the British Isles. All the photos are like this, velvety darks and seventies color schemes. But I saw this one and knew I wanted a painting of it.

(The caption in the book? “Resting on the usual fish-and-chips wrapping, fried haddock and potatoes will be seasoned with salt and vinegar.”)

I pretty much adore fish and chips. There was a restaurant–if you could call it that–near my hometown called The Chippery. It was hardly more than a shack, and the ceiling was a repurposed boat bottom. There were wine-dark glass bottles of malt vinegar on the wall, and I always ordered “the Cabin Boy”–one piece fish, chips, and a little plastic container of cocktail sauce.

Plus some clam chowder for good measure.

I went there with my dad, and then later, with my mom and my pop-pop. My grandfather and I would continue to go there together into my twenties, after he had his stroke. The last time I was in New Jersey, Jordan’s dad (also a fan) told me they shut down. The loss I felt was palpable–like an aftershock of the grief I felt over my grandfather’s death years before.

So the food in the picture means more to me than just delicious food, though it means that, too. It also has something to do with memory, with family, with tradition.

There was a time when I thought I might be a painter. In high school, I’d stay up all night painting (this, too, has something to do with loss: my mother’s friend Chuck gave me free art lessons, my first canvases, my first set of acrylic paints. He taught me how to do underpaintings, value scales, teased me about Pern, took me to life drawing sessions at the Watchung Arts Center, then, over the course of a few months, faded away from cancer). I applied to art schools. Then I freaked. For years, I’d been struggling to define myself as either an artist or a writer. The kids’ at the portfolio review days seemed much better prepared than I was, and I worried I was making the wrong decision. So I changed my mind. Art will always be there for me, I told myself.

And it has been, but only in fits and starts. I probably do one painting a year, with other art projects thrown in now and then. You can find some of my more recent stuff here, among other places. I even illustrated a book last year, though it was a long, arduous process. I’ve seen copies in Publix, and although the experience was hard, I couldn’t help but feel proud. For some reason, I know that (so long as I push myself), I’ve actually matured as an artist–that feels fortuitous and slightly unearned and weird.

(Have I posted this picture? I don’t think I have. I made Jordan a pretentious portrait of himself for his last birthday. Most of the time these days, my art is a gift for someone. I rarely do art-for-art’s sake anymore. That doesn’t mean that it’s not awesome. Haughty White Jordan, as we call him, is definitely awesome, if I do say so myself.)

I’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot lately, thanks to SEAS RUN DRY. My heroine, Irene, is, at eighteen, supposedly about to embark on her own art school adventure–but she, too, is having second thoughts. Art is an emotional, loaded thing for her (as it is for most artists, I suspect), and she can’t help but wonder what her other choices are. All her life, she’s been Irene-the-girl-who-can-draw. She wonders what she’d be without that. Of course, a run-in with a certain merman gets in her way a little bit.

(I keep thinking about how, in her speech at our college graduation, my friend Tiff spoke about changing her own plans during college. I think that’s common. I think it’s a lot to ask of an eighteen-year-old, to know who she is and to make decisions about who she will be.)

Anyway, I’m rambling. Mostly, I just wanted to share my painting with you. I think it might go up by the eating area of my new apartment in my new state. Mostly, I just felt proud.

In other news, I bought a new, vintage-style bathing suit, which I absolutely adore. Polka dots!

Also, I really, really love this story, “How to Make Friends in Seventh Grade” by Nick Poniatowski, in this week’s issue of Strange Horizons–so much, that, when I finished proofing it, I sent the author a squealy fan-girl letter. Please do go take a look! It’s young adultish and so, so good.