Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - Imaginary Friend

Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

20 reviews

mattlefevers's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

It's been a long time since I was legitimately so mixed on a book.

On paper, "the author of YA sensation Perks of Being A Wallflower attempts a riff on the classic Stephen King format of 'small town gradually destroys itself'" sounds like exactly my jam. And that's definitely the pattern Chbosky is following here — think Needful Things, Under the Dome, and the like. Many characters, lots of hopping between viewpoints, and this idyllic small town slowly coming unraveled. It seems like it'd be amazing.

But somehow this book felt long in a way that those comparable King books don't, to me. The prose is readable, I wasn't usually having too bad of a time while I had it open, but every time I closed it I'd look to see how much progress I'd made and the Kindle readout would be 1% further along. It's so long and I'm not sure the book makes the best use of all that space.

Part of what makes a The Stand or something work is diving deep into the psyches of that sprawling cast of characters, really making each one a fully fleshed out human being. Chbosky apes that format here but each of the characters in the town has precisely one (1) character trait, and repeats it indefinitely. This woman is a drunk, and one hundred percent of her viewpoint chapters are about wanting alcohol. This other character was abused, and every line of her inner monologue is her thinking about that. All of the characters are sketched so thinly that there wound up only being about two or three that I cared about in the whole town. It's telling that two of the primary protagonists of the entire novel are referred to as "Christopher's mom" and "the sheriff", even in their own viewpoint chapters.

Similarly, it's hard to tell what (if any) agency any of these characters are supposed to have. Without divulging too much about the plot (there are some terrific twists I'd rather leave unspoiled) the back half of the novel has things descending into chaos, but it's never even remotely clear whether characters are possessed (and have no free will at all), or whether they're being tempted by their own secret desires and fears (but are giving in to that temptation as conscious agents?) or if they're essentially just zombies from a low rent horror film. I don't know what the point is of introducing dozens of friends and bullies and classmates and neighbors and lovers and coworkers only to have all of them end up in basically the same position regardless of their interior life.

Really in all respects the stakes here are baffling. For a story that starts out as a pretty grounded slow burn, the latter half of the book is surreal and hard to track. People are escaping from places, then going back into those places, then escaping again; people unlock amazing powers and then six sentences later they're powerless to defend themselves; the villain's plan is thwarted two thirds of the way through but nothing changes and eventually they have to be thwarted again; sometimes things are happening in a dream and sometimes they aren't but seem like they are. I never have any idea what anybody is trying to accomplish or how. It's truly a story of people running back and forth across town while things happen to them.

The language is repetitious to a fault — I did a Kindle search for the words "baby teeth" (21), "cool side of the pillow" (13), and "floods" (55), which are only a handful of the mantras the author keeps returning to in a Groundhog Day style loop. (He also gets a lot of mileage out of the word 'son' sounding like the word 'sun'.)

So why did I read all seven hundred something pages of a book that annoyed me this much? Partly because I've only ever not finished about five books in my life and I owe Chbosky enough loyalty to not add his sophomore novel to that pile. But there are also things here that do work. I felt a lot of love for Kate (sorry, 'Christopher's mother') as a character, and for the journey of faith that Mary Katherine undergoes in the novel. There were moments that startled me, or moved me, or spread a savage grin across my face. And some of the twists... there's a reason I'm talking around the actual plot of this book. There are surprises and reveals and reversals in here that legitimately delighted me. Every time I was this close to putting it down and never coming back, I'd hit a chapter that turned everything upside down and made me excited about it again.

So... I don't know. It's very hard for me to recommend a book that feels this long and has this many flaws, but. If you were already planning to read it, I hope you enjoy it. There are things here to like.

Content Warnings

cryptidenthusiast's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

Well that got really weird towards the end.

EDIT:
Okay so after sitting with this book for a bit longer, I dropped my review from a 3 to a 1.5. The initial premise was good, if a little bit stereotypical: kid is listening to a voice of his “imaginary friend” that turns out to be more sinister then originally thought.

Further into act 3 though, things went absolutely off the rails, and took a severe nose drive.

The sudden religious spin was unneeded and unnecessary, and did the book more harm then good. We figure out the ‘Nice Man’ is actually Satan? And this is where I personally hated it. Depicting two characters dealing with addiction as ‘the devil whispering in their ear’? Or a literal child wanting to lash out and hurt the person sexually assaulting her is her ‘giving in to the devil’? I don’t know, it just left a very sour taste in my mouth the longer I thought about it. There’s enough demonization of addiction and mental illness out there, we didn’t need more. And damning a child who’s being assaulted because she wanted to hurt her abuser back? Not a great look.

Also the entire thing with Mary Katherine?? Her final arc is her coming to the realization that thinking of a “sin” is not equal to actually committing it…..but she IS pregnant. By thinking about sex? Which just negates everything she learns?

Content Warnings