Sense and Sensibility in Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls and Seanan McGuire’s 'Down Among the Sticks and Bones'

Abstract

The present paper discusses two Young Adult fantasies about childhood trauma. My starting point is
Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls, in which the protagonist copes with the looming death of his mother
with the unsought help of a monster. The tree-monster reveals the boy’s psychic landscape and brings
destruction and healing with the help of stories. This parable about the stress-managing role of
storytelling/fantasy addresses the process of understanding one’s negative emotions to become initiated
into a more complex, adult world. Analyzing Seanan McGuire’s Down Among the Sticks and Bones
continues the discussion. The traumatized twin couple of the novella find a temporary home in an
alternative world that may also be read a psychic landscape, whose monstrosity is a kind of response to
the characters’ needs in the real world. McGuire suggests that the twin daughters’ diverse abilities to
interpret their situations come from the difference in their emotional states, which is directly linked to
how they coped with their traumatic childhood.