Mister Monday

Mister Monday

Author	Garth Nix
Cover artist	Chris Carlson, Don Farrall & Kamil Vojnar
Language	English
Series	Keys to the Kingdom
Genre	Fantasy, Young adult novel
Publisher	Scholastic Press
Publication date	1 July 2003
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	445 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-439-55123-4
Followed by	Grim Tuesday

Mister Monday is the first novel in the Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix. The other books in the series are: Grim Tuesday, Drowned Wednesday, Sir Thursday, Lady Friday, Superior Saturday and Lord Sunday. Mister Monday is afflicted with the deadly sin of Sloth.

Plot introduction

Mister Monday details the adventure of a schoolboy, Arthur Penhaligon, who, during an asthma attack is entrusted with a key by Mister Monday, a strange man from a place called the House (or the Epicenter of the Universe). The key, in the shape of a clock minute hand, is passed to Arthur on the supposition that he is about to die and the key will be returned to the original owner, ensuring his ownership of it and therefore fulfilling his part of the Will, an ancient part of text that had been broken by the seven Trustees of the Architect, the creator of the universe.. However, he survives, now in possession of both the key and a strange notebook known as the Compleat Atlas, and soon is being hounded by Monday's henchmen, Nithlings, who are beasts of Nothing that reside in the House. these Nithlings, who are also called Fetchers, inadvertently bring a plague of some sort to Arthur's home town. Arthur escapes the quarantine of his town with the help of the Will, who is a tangible creature of type, and sets off into a mysterious House, which has appeared his town, with a desperate need so solve all of the problems which had befouled his recent life.

Plot summary

The story begins with a prologue in which the first part of the Will of the Architect escapes from its prison on a dead star when an Inspector visits to ensure that the Will is secure.

Meanwhile, on Earth, a boy named Arthur Penhaligon is struggling through his first Monday at a new school. He suffers from severe asthma, but despite his pleas to the coach, he is forced to run the cross-country course. He collapses due to an asthma attack. Two of his schoolmates stop to help him use his inhaler and then run to get help.

While waiting for help, Arthur notices two strange-looking men materialising out of thin air. The first, known as Sneezer, is old, tall, grey-haired, and untidily dressed. The other is in a three-wheeled bath-chair which is being pushed by Sneezer. This man is much younger, handsome, but still bizarrely dressed. He is known as Mister Monday. They come close to Arthur, discussing the question of whether or not to give 'the Key' to Arthur. Monday is disinclined, but Sneezer assures him that by giving the Key to Arthur, who is meant to die shortly, Monday will fulfill his part of the Will. After Arthur dies, he will once again regain control of the Key. Reluctantly, Monday drops the Key into Arthur's hand. The Key is a thin, metal spike like the blade of a knife, but appears to have the shape of the minute hand of an old clock. Sneezer instructs Monday to give Arthur the other half, but Monday refuses, claiming that with the full Key, Arthur might live. Sneezer becomes angry; his voice changes as he spits out both words and a line of type. Monday points a metallic spike at Sneezer; Arthur hears a scream; then both Monday and Sneezer are gone, while the swirling type remains. The type becomes a small book which drops onto Arthur's head. Arthur puts the book in his pocket, picks up the Key and suddenly regains his breath. He notices his coach and the school nurse rushing across the field towards him. He buries the Key and immediately feel his lungs tighten, before he passes out.

Arthur wakes up in a hospital bed, tired. He is visited by the two schoolmates who helped him on the cross-country track. Their names are Ed and Leaf and are brother and sister respectively. Leaf comments that she had seen an old man pushing a bath-chair with a young man in it; obviously Sneezer and Mister Monday. Ed has not seen Monday and Sneezer, but claims to have seen a bunch of men with doglike faces digging up the field. Leaf confirms this. Arthur, who desperately wanted the event to have been a dream, asks Leaf to retrieve the small book he placed in his school shirt pocket. She does; Arthur is disappointed to discover that the events were real after all. Ed and Leaf are ushered out by a nurse who then proceeds to give Arthur an injection. In pain, Arthur pushes his hand under the pillow, only to have his fingers touch the Key, which had mysteriously appeared there.

A week later, Arthur returns home. When he gets there, he uses the key to open the book, which is called an Atlas, and learns that the House (a giant, polyglot-fashioned building that he passed when going home) has an entrance called the Monday's Postern. That night, he is visited by the doglike "Fetchers" noted by Ed. He is saved by the ceramic Komodo dragon in which he had put the key. He, during the next day finds himself being pursued by Monday's Noon, who proves to be more powerful than the relatively vulnerable Fetchers.

He escapes, using the Key, and enters the House as directed by a mysterious message. There, he finds that the House is a world unto itself, around which the Universe is organized, whose purpose is, or was, to observe and record all that occurs in the infinity. In his travels through the House, he finds that he is the Rightful Heir, a person to whom the Will was referred. If he fulfills this Function, the Architect of the World's original intention will be enacted. To fulfill it, he must and does seize control of the other half of Mister Monday's Key, which grants mastery of the demesne called the Lower House. He is accompanied during the most of his journey by a cockney girl-child named Suzy Turquoise Blue, who amid many other children was brought to the House by the immortal known as the Piper and now attempts to fulfill a given function of the House.

There, too, he learns something of the House's history: wherein the seven Trustees known as the Morrow Days, being contaminated by the seven deadly sins, refused to obey the Architect's Will; wherein the Architect's consort the Old One had acted in the role of Prometheus, in that he had defied the Architect for some purpose of his own and been imprisoned as a result; wherein the House, under the inadequate rule of the Trustees, has become a dystopia.

Arthur, at the end of the book, heals Mister Monday of his sin, hands the responsibility of government over to the Will itself, manifest in the form of Dame Primus (a name almost literally meaning "First Lady"), returns to Earth, and tries to regain the threads of his old life.