title: Good grief: bereavement literature for young adults and A Monster Calls.
abstract: Recent years have seen a proliferation of critically acclaimed novels for young adults dealing with bereavement. This is part of a 'bereavement turn'--a contemporary cultural movement to examine publicly our attitudes to death and grieving. This paper examines the narrative strategies in Patrick Ness's award-winning novel A Monster Calls to look at the ways in which the psychic burden of the impending loss of a parent through cancer is managed. The book draws on conventions of children's literature to create a sense of familiarity that helps to balance the emotional stress of the story. The Kübler-Ross stages of grief serve as a heuristic that helps the story deliver catharsis in spite of its inevitably traumatic subject matter. A Monster Calls is an important addition to the canon of fictional pathography.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Co-Curricular Studies, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK. giskin.day@imperial.ac.uk
authors.forename: Giskin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Day
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002399:Catharsis; D002648:Child; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D008093:Literature, Modern; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology; D063129:Parental Death / Q000523:psychology*; D011582:Psychological Theory; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D055815:Young Adult