A Review of Stephen Chbosky’s “Imaginary Friend”
A Book Review Masquerading as Something Else …
In the age of COVID-19, a group of book lovers meet in a virtual café to discuss their latest reads … .
Aja1977: … and so I really enjoyed The Stillness of Katherine by Agnes de Tooth. It’s 500-pages long, and told entirely from the perspective of a woman sitting alone in a chair, but it’s utterly captivating because it’s so poetic and …
Tim1985: Hey, look everyone. It’s Zachary Houle joining the meeting late.
Writerguy1975: Hi, everyone. Sorry that I’m late to the party. As in six months late to the party. I have a book I want to talk about called Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky, published more than six months ago, and the reason I want to talk about it is because, frankly, it’s probably the worst book I’ve ever read. And that’s saying a lot because I read … .
ZenArcade1984: … a lot of books. Yes, we know. You’re definitely more than six months late to the party, so why don’t we talk about … ?
Writerguy1975: Thank you. So the thing is Imaginary Friend is more than 700 pages too long. I was done with this book around page 200. Basically, it starts off with a crackling premise — a young boy and his mother arrive in small-town America to escape an abusive boyfriend, and then the boy goes missing for six days. Then, the book just gets stupid: the boy, once found, is tasked by an imaginary friend of his to build a treehouse so that the residents of the town he and his mother now live in don’t die on Christmas Day, which is looming. The end. Guys, the boy is just seven years old, but he builds a treehouse with his young friends from school that puts a master craftsman to shame.
DoubleNickels1984: Thanks, Zach. Aja, what did you think of the use of wood iconography in The Stillness … ?
Writerguy1975: Which reminds me that this book is chock full of references to God and the Catholic Church that don’t add anything to the story. And every time that Chobosky writes a sentence that goes “Father, Son, Holy Ghost,” take a drink. A virgin pregnancy is additionally involved in the telling of the tale, and if it’s a metaphor for something — I don’t know what it is. This is not the worst of this novel’s faults, though, not by a long shot. First of all, the book is poorly written with one-dimensional characters and wooden dialogue. Secondly, it is written as though the story is being filtered through a seven-year-old’s mind. That’s nice when we’re dealing with a character of that age, but this tendency to be immature seeps into the thoughts of the adult characters. I don’t think this is deliberate. I think it’s just poor writing.
Aja1977: Great, as I was saying … .
Writerguy1975: The other thing that’s atrocious about this novel is that it’s all plot and no story. Chbosky keeps having things happen to his characters, but these things do very little to advance the story. In fact, you could shave the last 100 pages or so off this book and reach the same result, as the ending is merely the characters struggling and mostly failing to get away from a source of evil. (By the way, this is a horror novel, but I would characterize it as a horrible novel. Har har de har har.) There is no way that this novel deserved to be 700 pages long. It could easily be a quarter of that length.
Tim1985: Right, so you were saying Aja1977 that The Stillness … .
Writerguy1975: I really felt that when you combine this novel’s overlength with its hackneyed storytelling and an overabundance of plot, the result is something on the printed page that has no more utilitarian use than being expensive toilet paper — and we all know the regular stuff is in particularly short supply right now. But I’m being honest. This book is absolute garbage. It has very little reason to exist. I suppose I should have been warned when I tried to pick up this book for review on Edelweiss before it’s publication, only to be rejected in getting it by the publisher. (I read my copy borrowed from the public library, before it closed due to the pandemic.) It was as though the publisher knew how terrible this book was and was keeping a lid on review copies to prevent negative reviews from “experienced” reviewers. Because, believe me, reading the back half of this novel was just excruciating. What’s more, the ending of the book isn’t very memorable. If you’re going to write a doorstop, you need to make sure that it concludes with literary fireworks. Yes, there’s a “twist” that I didn’t see coming, but it’s hardly a reward for slogging through page after page of pure drudgery.
Aja1977: Cough, as I was saying …
Writerguy1975: In the end, there’s nothing worth recommending about this work. Not even the appealing first 50 pages or so, which are gripping. This book so very quickly falls apart after this, that it’s not even worth reading just for the thrill of reading something so bad that it’s good. Imaginary Friend is just plain awful. The book has absolutely nothing worthwhile going for it. If we’re all going to die from COVID-19 infections, you probably should spend your time reading something much more enjoyable than this piece of tripe before you kick the bucket. I feel that I’m repeating myself, and I’m maybe not doing a good enough job of conveying just how stupefying this wannabe epic novel is, but, basically, you’ve got better things to do with your life than read Imaginary Friend. Just trust me on this one. Now, was someone saying something about a 500-page book about a woman sitting in a chair in isolation that was poetic?
Stephen Chbosky’s Imaginary Friend was published by Grand Central Publishing on October 1, 2019.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
