A Monster Calls recap

Thirteen-year-old Conor O'Malley is struggling with his mother's worsening cancer, bullying at school, and a recurring nightmare he cannot face. At 12:07 a giant being formed from the nearby yew tree begins visiting him. It promises three morally unsettling tales, after which Conor must tell a fourth story: the truth of his nightmare. The monster's tales challenge simple divisions between heroes and villains, while their violence spills into Conor's life. He wrecks his grandmother's sitting room and seriously injures his bully, yet adults respond with pity rather than punishment. When his mother's last treatment fails, Conor finally relives the nightmare and admits that, exhausted by fear, he once wanted the waiting to end and let her fall. The monster teaches him that the thought does not mean he wanted her dead. Conor reaches the hospital in time to tell his mother he does not want her to go, then lets her die without hiding from his love or grief.

Conor O'Malley wakes from the recurring nightmare he will not name, then hears his name called at 12:07. The old yew tree outside has become an enormous monster and approaches the house, but Conor reacts with more anger than fear. By morning the tree appears normal, though signs of its visit remain. Conor's mother is receiving cancer treatment and insists she will recover. At school, other pupils either pity or avoid him. His former friend Lily exposed his mother's illness to their classmates, and Conor has cut her off, while Harry and two other boys bully him. The monster returns and explains that it will tell Conor three stories. Afterward, Conor must tell a fourth: his own story and the truth concealed in his nightmare.

The monster tells its first tale, set in a kingdom where an apparently wicked queen is blamed after a prince's beloved dies. The prince claims that the queen murdered the young woman and rallies the people against her, but the monster reveals that the prince committed the killing and used the accusation to secure his throne. Even so, the monster protected him and helped drive away the queen, who was not a murderer but was no benevolent ruler either. Conor objects that the story offers no clear good person to support. The monster insists that people and their choices are rarely simple. The lesson frustrates Conor, who wants direct answers and, more urgently, wants the monster's healing power to save his mother.

Conor's grandmother arrives as his mother's condition worsens, and plans are made for Conor to stay at her immaculate house. His father visits from America but cannot offer the permanent new home Conor imagines. The monster's second tale concerns an apothecary who values the yew's healing power and a rigid parson who condemns him. When the parson's daughters become ill, he abandons his stated beliefs and begs the apothecary for help; the apothecary refuses because the man now believes in nothing. The monster then destroys the parson's home. Conor eagerly joins the destruction, only to find that he has in reality demolished his grandmother's sitting room. His grandmother is devastated, but she does not punish him in the conventional way he expects. The absence of consequences leaves him feeling even more cut off from ordinary life.

At school, Harry changes tactics and declares that he no longer sees Conor. This deliberate erasure breaks through Conor's restraint. The monster begins its third tale, about an invisible man who demanded to be seen, and Conor attacks Harry with the monster's force behind him. Harry is badly injured. Conor expects expulsion or severe punishment, but the headteacher treats him as a distressed child because of his mother's illness. Once again, exceptional sympathy makes him feel invisible rather than forgiven. Lily continues trying to reach him. Meanwhile, Conor discovers that his mother's new medicine is derived from yew trees and hopes this explains the monster's arrival. The treatment does not reverse her decline, and she is returned to the hospital. The monster refuses to promise a cure, forcing Conor closer to the truth he has avoided.

A note from Lily assures Conor that she still sees him, but his mother's condition is now critical. Conor runs to the yew tree and demands the help he thought the monster would provide. Instead, the fourth tale begins: Conor is placed inside his recurring nightmare, where his mother is falling into darkness and he is trying to hold her. He admits that he let go because the long ordeal had exhausted him and part of him wanted it to end. The monster explains that this thought does not mean he wanted his mother to die; conflicting feelings can both be true, and actions matter more than an unwanted thought. Conor's grandmother finds him and gets him to the hospital in time. At his mother's bedside, Conor finally says that he does not want her to die. When the end comes, he releases her while holding on to the truth of his love. His mother dies, and Conor faces the grief he had feared rather than remaining trapped by guilt and silence.

The monster forces Conor to enter the recurring nightmare in which his mother hangs above a dark drop and he loses his grip on her. Conor finally admits that part of him deliberately let go because he wanted the strain and uncertainty of her illness to end. He has mistaken that involuntary wish for a desire that she die and has been punishing himself for it. The monster tells him that thoughts can contradict one another and are not the same as actions. Conor's grandmother finds him beneath the yew tree and rushes him to the hospital. He reaches his mother's bedside shortly before her death. Supported by the monster, he can at last tell her that he does not want her to go while also releasing his hold when the moment comes. He and his grandmother face the loss together, their shared grief replacing some of their hostility. The monster's stories have not cured his mother; they have enabled Conor to speak the truth and survive it.