Book vs Movie Review: A MONSTER CALLS by Patrick Ness

FACTS ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: A Monster Calls

German Title: Sieben Minuten nach Mitternacht

Author: Patrick Ness
Publisher: Walker Books
Price:  £7.99

Pages: 236
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Cancer
Year: 2015 

FACTS ABOUT THE MOVIE

Title: A Monster Calls

German Title: Sieben Minuten nach Mitternacht

Director:  Juan Antonio Bayona

Screenplay: Patrick Ness

Actors: Lewis MacDougall, Toby Kebbell, Felicity Jones, Liam Neeson, Sigourney Weaver 

Year: 2016

WHAT IS THE STORY ABOUT? / BACK OF THE BOOK

Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window. It's ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth.

Bestselling novelist Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking tale of mischief, healing and above all, the courage it takes to survive.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK

I wanted to read this book for a long time and now finally decided to because it felt like a very fitting book for October. Before I bought it I debated between the edition that I now own and that you can see in the pictures and the edition with Jim Kay's illustrations in it. I eventually chose this version without the illustrations because I preferred the cover - but after having read the book and watched the movie I now think that I would actually recommend to buy the illustrated version.

Starting a new book is always an exciting thing to do - it's a fresh start, possibly the entry to a brand new world - and this excitement of starting something new really stayed with me during the first 100 pages of this book. It was just so interesting to read and I therefore really enjoyed reading it a lot. Since it's a very short book with very little writing on each page, it could easily be read in a day or two, but because my new semester at university has just started it did take me a lot longer. 

This really is a perfect book to read in autumn because it is set in October and just has this spooky element to it and is just a great book to read while cuddling yourself in. This is also why it didn't feel right to read the book outside as it got warmer again - well, I suppose the best time to read this would be around midnight, as its German title suggests which translates to "Seven minutes after midnight". After having read the book I must say that I do actually prefer the German title to the English one, especially because the English title seems to contradict what the monster is trying to make Connor understand - that it got called and didn't call itself. 

The chapters of this book are incredibly short and really keep you reading on and on and on because you always think "just another chapter" and then that chapter is already over again and you think "well, just another one" and so on. I really loved that because that way the book always kept me craving for more.

Although Harry Potter is my favourite book series of all time, I normally don't read a lot of fantasy books and I must admit that I had thought that this book would also turn out to be not actually about a real monster but just about something that would eventually turn into reality through a plot twist or something. Obviously you could argue that the Monster was just in Conor's head but the book and the movie don't really portray it that way so I would still argue that this is a fantasy story. But that didn't bother me because I found it very fitting for October/Halloween month and also because the Monster was a really fascinating character. It had this wise, "old-man-telling-a-fairytale-story"-vibe to it that I really enjoyed.
The Monster's stories were very interesting, smart, unpredictable and therefore challenging for both Conor and the reader. I really loved their twists and turns and they really got me thinking. Since I loved the depth of the first two stories I was a bit disappointed by the shortness of the third one which didn't really reach me. 

Besides the twists of these stories, I got also surprised by one thing that Conor did before and during the telling of the second story. The satisfaction of destroying something was so incredibly well described and written that it woke the urge in me to destroy something valuable as well. I imagine that this passage was also very satisfying to write for the author. 

Every time something modern like Skype got mentioned in the story, it through me off completely because it just didn't seem to fit into the book since the story just didn't feel modern to me but had this timeless fairytale vibe to it.

 The story of this book was totally different from what I had expected it to be from what little I knew beforehand about it. I had hoped for more of a plottwist to be honest, not necessarily to explain the Monster in a realistic way but just .. something more. It also felt like the book ended way too early in Conor's story and that there would have been the need to tell the story a bit longer and shine a light on what happens next.

I must also admit that although I always pitied and felt sorry for Connor, I never (except for the destruction part) really related to him because he hadn't a lot of depth to him. And his nightmare which is treated as this huge thing in the story was something that I had already expected fairly from the beginning and that just wasn't that big of a deal for me. The scene in which the Monster forced Conor to speak his truth was very powerful and the message of the book/the Monster is really important but I just wasn't satisfied with the amount of hype the book created for the build up of this "speaking his truth" because the climax of that arc of suspense felt rather anticlimactic to me. And so the book left me longing for more. 

MY THOUGHTS ON THE MOVIE

I was very interested in the movie adaption of the book after having finished reading the book and I watched it on the evening of the day that I had finished the book. 

Already the opening of the movie blew me away because it was just so insanely beautifully made with the delicate images of colouring, painting, drawing and the wonderful use of watercolouring. This element of creating art gets revisited many times throughout the movie and also gave Conor more depth because his mother and he now had this shared connection through their passion for art. 

I already knew the story through the book so the movie couldn't disappoint me in that regard but I must say that it did touch me way more than the book did. The movie made me so much more emotional than the book and also managed to make me cry, while the book just left me unsatisfied.

Since I had just finished the book the same day, I still had most of the book's lines in my head and was really amazed to find that the movie stayed so close and true to the book (which is probably thanks to Patrick Ness, the author of the book, writing the screenplay for the movie). Most of the dialogue was taken straight out of the book and everything that wasn't in the book but got added to the screenplay gave the story and the characters a lot more depth - something that the book would also have greatly profited from. 

Although I've seen posters of the movie before, I had still envisioned the Monster to look different while reading. The Monster in the movie had a lot of resemblance to Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy and it took me some time to warm up to it. And I really didn't like the red glowing of the Monster when it first came to life and was glad that they didn't keep that element afterwards. 

The opening titles of the movie already give away that Liam Neeson speaks the Monster and that bothered me a bit at first because I then always thought of him when the Monster spoke - but then the movie included such a beautiful twist that I loved so much and that made the movie 100% deeper and more emotional for me. A lot of people who watch the movie might not even realise that and the ones who do might not want to know it beforehand so they can experience the same wonderful and emotional moment of realisation as I did. So I will write everything concerning this in red and cursive and you can just skip it if you don't want to know. 

Conor's mum mentions Conor's grandpa fairly early on in the movie and as far as I remember there's no mentioning of a grandpa in the book so that struck me as interesting. And when later on a picture was shown of Felicity Jones who plays Conor's mum and Liam Neeson, it was clear that he was supposed to be her father - and therefore Conor's grandpa. And since Liam Neeson speaks the Monster the movie suggested that the Monster was actually Conor's grandpa keeping watch over him. This was such a beautiful idea and really made me very emotional.

Since I loved the scenes of painting, drawing and colouring so much in the movie I thought that the book edition with the illustrations in it might have added a bit of that art factor to the book aswell.

CONCLUSION

I really loved reading the book during the first 100 pages and it was just the perfect book to read in October/Halloween month because of the Monster and the storytelling aspect to it. It is very easy to read and the story captivated me right from the start and always made me want to read more and more and more although I really needed to sleep.

The Monster's stories really got me thinking because they were so smart and unpredictable and I just enjoyed them a lot. The fairy tale-aspect of them gave the book even more of an autumnal vibe. 

I had expected some big twist or turn in the whole story as there was in the first two stories that the Monster told and had already predicted Conor's nightmare's truth from the beginning so that twist wasn't really one for me. The book also ended too early in Conor's story for me and therefore the book left me rather unsatisfied. 

The movie amazed me through its incredibly beautiful use of scenes of colouring and drawing and just added more layers to Conor and was just a visual masterpiece. The cinematography of the stories that the Monster told were just a feast for the eyes.

I loved that the movie stayed so close to the book but must say that the movie did make me far more emotional than the book because it touched me a lot more. 

And it also felt important to me that the movie did not end at the same point as the book did but added a bit more afterwards. 

The movie left me emotional while the book left me unsatisfied so I actually prefer the movie to the book. 

RATING

I award this book 3,5 out of 5 stars.

I award this movie 4 out of 5 stars.