... an all-out, not-for-the-fainthearted horror novel, one of the most effective and ambitious of recent years. Who would have guessed? ... To be sure, the underlying sensibility that characterized Wallflower is present in the new book, particularly in its empathetic portraits of people struggling to recover from personal tragedy. Beyond that, Imaginary Friend is a radical departure on virtually every level. Perhaps its most impressive aspect is the confidence with which Chbosky deploys the more fantastical elements of his complex narrative, using the baroque, hallucinatory imagery of horror fiction to tell a very human story with universal implications ... a book with many things on its mind. It is, of course, a horror novel, and it delivers more than its share of profoundly disturbing moments. Beyond that, it provides a compelling portrait of small-town life, while examining the ways in which lovelessness and systematic abuse eat away at the fabric of family and community life. At the same time, through its portrayal of the relationship between Christopher and his ferociously protective mother, it offers one of the most affecting accounts of parental devotion I’ve seen in a very long time. The result is a page-turning meditation on human suffering whose spiritual dimension does not become fully apparent until the entire story has been told. Imaginary Friend may have been a long time coming, but the time was well spent. This is an absorbing, original and genuinely surprising novel. I hope we don’t have to wait 20 more years to see where Chbosky goes next.
With multiple points of view that probe the thoughts and nightmares of characters from all over town, this is an immersive read that walks the line between dark fantasy and horror. With its highly precocious young hero, the novel reads like a season of Stranger Things. Suggest it to readers who enjoyed Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Hex (2016), Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock (2016), or anything by Amy Lukavics.
Chbosky’s true skill is in turning a book of absolute horrors — both fantastical and real — into an uplifting yarn ... [Christopher's] consistent goodness is both heartwarming and a little implausible ... It is some relief, then, that Chbosky does not narrate the novel solely from Christopher’s perspective. He is excellent on communities, and he picks apart this small town chillingly. These different accounts not only add real pace to the narrative, but convey how closely entwined, how claustrophobic small towns can be — especially when the horror screws are being tightened. The other characters work because they are flawed; their inconsistencies are explained, often movingly ... because the darkness is so prevalent, Chbosky seems anxious to amp up the sentimentality, too, to make sure that this is what triumphs. In writing a book about so much — fate, destiny, redemption, power — the plausibility of characters and narrative can sometimes be lost to this loftier thematic aim. Chbosky is best not when he looks at the extremes of good and evil, but when he looks at the gray in between — at everyday people, their trauma, their interactions, and the hundreds of human inconsistencies and desires that can make a community fall apart and knit itself back together again.
Stephen Chbosky’s heart-pounding Imaginary Friend begins with a warning: 'Don’t leave the street.' It might just as well begin with a warning to the reader: 'Don’t start reading this book. You won’t be able to stop.' Or, at least: 'Do not read it at night.'...[Chbosky] has reinvented the literary horror novel ... With Imaginary Friend, Stephen Chbosky has written another classic, setting a new high watermark for fantasy horror. It is the greatest story ever told of love and salvation in which a little child shall save them. It is as spine-tinglingly sinister as any Stephen King tome, as ghastly as any ghost story by Peter Straub, as gothic as any Neil Gaiman title. It should become a horror perennial, taken out at Halloween and Christmas or any other time a reader wants a proper fright. It is the scariest novel of the year, a menacing book for all seasons.
This doorstopper literary horror novel is thematically rich and feels cinematic. Short chapters following numerous distinct characters keep the pace quick. Horror is imbued throughout both in gory, terrifying fantasies as well as in the more realistic horror of abuse and neglect. Christian imagery and symbols are sometimes heavy-handed. While the sense of immediacy to keep hearts pounding is always prevalent, the last third of the book feels overly drawn out ... This epic tale of ultimate good vs. evil is a bit long-winded but still impressive in scope and truly scary.
But the nine years Chbosky reportedly spent writing the book shows in his well-crafted scares, snappy pacing and finely tuned plot. Despite its faults, Imaginary Friend is well worth the time for those who dare.
Reading this book alone in the house, late at night, I will admit to a thud of fear at a bump downstairs, and a rush to switch all the lights on. But there are only so many carnivorous children and menacing deer a reader can take before becoming inured to their terrors, and after a while Imaginary Friend drifts into repetition. Christopher and his friends – and the adults in the story – are well drawn, but Chbosky is stage-managing a lot of characters, and as he moves through the gradual disintegration of each of their realities, over 720 pages, his story slows … and slows. That’s not to diss the blockbuster horror novel – my shelves are lined with Stephen King, and there are elements of King here (small town, group of young boys, evil lurking beneath). But if you’re going to pay homage to the master, you’re going to have to do it better ... Chbosky also stumbles when it comes to his register. Writing mostly from the perspective of a seven-year-old, he’s clearly tried to simplify, to imply the worldview of a child. Over the course of the novel, this starts to grate ... All the elements are here to create something truly scary: it just needs to be boiled down, fine-tuned – cut, basically.
If Chbosky’s debut was a crowd-pleasing account of bullying and love, heartache and being different, Imaginary Friend is a convoluted, deeply unappealing Christian-ish allegory that struggles to say something profound about good and evil. On a basic level of style, the writing stuns with its amateurish flatness. When someone screams? It’s a blood-curdling scream. When evil is on the move? The temperature in the room will drop several degrees ... Parsing the final 300 pages of this 700-plus page book, what had been just dull palaver becomes almost camp in its unserious effort to bring about a stirring conclusion ... Horror can cohere, it can rally around a compelling idea of good, and it can make clear for us a notion of courage or sacrifice. But here, an author who wrote an odd and affecting debut has followed it up with an undisciplined mess. Imaginary Friend should have stayed in Chbosky’s head.
Perhaps it’s redundant to observe that a book so heavily redolent of Stephen King novels would be full of thin characters and starkly improbable behaviors, but The Perks of Being a Wallflower was so sure-handed on both those specific fronts that moments like this one, which crop up all through Imaginary Friend, feel as galling as they are disappointing. If this second novel really is going to feel like it was written by an entirely different author, readers would just naturally hope it’s a more talented author...Instead, the prose keeps getting in the way ... Christopher’s adventures with his new friends devolve immediately into re-heated moments from It or Stand By Me ... reads at almost every point like a bloated screenplay, lounging by its pool saying 'Just green-light me, babies, and I’ll shed these extra pounds quick as lookin’ at you.' The fixed verdict awaiting all cult classic authors might be cruel, but in this case it’s also nothing but the truth: this is sure no Perks of Being a Wallflower.
...a tale of good vs. evil that never gels ... Chbosky brings deep humanity to his characters and creates genuinely unsettling tableaux, including a nightmarish otherworld that Christopher accesses via his treehouse, but considerable repetition extends the narrative while diminishing its impact. Christian overtones (some subtle, others less so) are pervasive, especially in the finale, and add little to the story. This doorstopper is long on words but short on execution.
...a creepy horror yarn that would do Stephen King proud ... One wonders why Kate doesn’t just fire up the station wagon and head down the Pennsylvania Turnpike rather than face things like a 'hissing lady' and a townsman who has suddenly begun to sport daggerlike teeth, but that’s the nature of a good scary story—and this one is excellent. A pleasing book for those who like to scare themselves silly, one to read with the lights on and the door bolted.
