Stephen Chbosky’s 1999 novel, The Perks of Being A Wallflower is what gives this very site its name. A coming-of-age novel that changed my life when I read it, and a 2011 film adaptation that I hold close to my heart. Since then, Chbosky has moved his attention to directing film and writing screenplays. But in the background, he had been working on a second book for almost twenty years before its eventual publication in 2019.
With two decades worth of anticipation, as well as a genre change to horror, and a length of almost 850 pages, Imaginary Friend appeared to be the twenty-first century answer to IT, but are those bold comparisons the very thing that stops it achieving the same level of greatness that Chbosky achieved with Perks?
Seven-year-old Christopher Reese is new to the town of Mill Grove. His mother, Kate, is on the run from an abusive ex-boyfriend with no money and no plan; Christopher struggles with reading, writing, and making friends…that is until he meets ‘The Nice Man’. As Christopher gains extraordinary powers and fixes all of his and his mother’s problems, the problems of many of Mill Grove’s townsfolk only seem to get worse.
The Nice Man informs Christopher of a coming war, an invisible war between the forces of good and evil, a war that Christopher holds the key to winning; but Christopher isn’t the first to be chosen, with a string of missing children spanning back five decades holding the only clues as to how to end this war once and for all.
I’m going to start off on the negatives because Invisible Friend really is quite great, but there’s some big problems that hold it back from being one of the best horror stories I’ve ever read. First of all, it’s far too long, coming in at a gargantuan eight-hundred and forty-seven pages it’s a tome of a novel that could have quite easily been at least half that length and still retained everything that made the story enjoyable.
Length is not the only problem, but pacing too is a significant issue, with almost two thirds of the book being dedicated to the climax of the story. It’s absolutely exhausting to have this epic battle between good and evil be drawn out over the majority of the book, especially because Chbosky keeps trying to find ways to up the stakes and introduce new twists every few chapters to the point where it starts to get a bit absurd.
Finally, the religious theming and imagery is a bit on the nose. Without giving too much away I initially thought a lot of the story’s early religious allusions were cleverly done to highlight some major issues with Christianity and blind faith, but then it’s revealed that actually they aren’t allusions at all and that all this religious stuff is actually real. It made the finale a little bit difficult to wrap my head around, and on one hand I appreciate how Chbosky manages to turn the Old Testament into a full-blown horror story, but it also came across as preachy and the way it wraps everything up just feels awkward as a result.
Aside from all that, Invisible Friend is quite excellent. Despite its faults in length, pace, and themes (I have made it sound worse than it is), Invisible Friend delivers one hell of a horror story, and it retains a lot of what made The Perks of Being A Wallflower so enjoyable.
The main thing is it’s digestible and an easy read, despite the inhumane length the chapters are very short, rarely pushing more than six pages. Plus, the language used is never complicated, a part of that stems from the story being told largely from the perspective of a seven year old, and part of it just being Chbosky’s style which never complicates itself more than it needs to.
The setup to the story is excellent. The characters of Christopher and Kate are explored excellently, and the mysteries of Mill Grove are woven in naturally and are immediately gripping. The book is split into seven acts, and I distinctly remember being completely floored by the ending to act one. The first two hundred pages or so really are the strongest in the entire book, and that’s not to say the rest of it is bad, but it’s those pages really did just fly by as I fell deep and hard into this world Chbosky crafted.
All of the characters are interesting, every single one of them, and that’s a rare to find. From the main character of Christopher, to even the most fleeting of characters like Emily Bertovich feel like real people, which is what makes the horror that much more terrifying.
Yes, the horror really is quite nasty at times. Aside from the comparisons that could easily be made to IT, Chbosky’s style feels very much cut from the Stephen King cloth here with some extremely gruesome imagery peppered throughout. Even when the book doesn’t talk about the more graphic horror, there’s plenty of time lend to child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, addiction, depression and anxiety, and much more. It’s a very grim book when Chbosky gets down to it, but crucially, like Perks, it never loses sight of that hope which prevents it from being so overwhelmingly bleak.
If you like Stephen King, then you should check out Invisible Friend. It’s the best King novel that he never wrote, which may sound like a knock on Chbosky’s individual style, but it is actually a big compliment to lend the book.
It’s indefensibly long, and whilst a lot of it is interesting, at least half of the book is fluff and could have been chopped down to provide a leaner and better paced experience.
This is definitely a book that’ll linger in my mind for some time to come, and I may even return to it again some time if I can space the best part of a month to get through it.
With two decades worth of anticipation, as well as a genre change to horror, and a length of almost 850 pages, Imaginary Friend appeared to be the twenty-first century answer to IT, but are those bold comparisons the very thing that stops it achieving the same level of greatness that Chbosky achieved with Perks?
Seven-year-old Christopher Reese is new to the town of Mill Grove. His mother, Kate, is on the run from an abusive ex-boyfriend with no money and no plan; Christopher struggles with reading, writing, and making friends…that is until he meets ‘The Nice Man’. As Christopher gains extraordinary powers and fixes all of his and his mother’s problems, the problems of many of Mill Grove’s townsfolk only seem to get worse.
The Nice Man informs Christopher of a coming war, an invisible war between the forces of good and evil, a war that Christopher holds the key to winning; but Christopher isn’t the first to be chosen, with a string of missing children spanning back five decades holding the only clues as to how to end this war once and for all.
I’m going to start off on the negatives because Invisible Friend really is quite great, but there’s some big problems that hold it back from being one of the best horror stories I’ve ever read. First of all, it’s far too long, coming in at a gargantuan eight-hundred and forty-seven pages it’s a tome of a novel that could have quite easily been at least half that length and still retained everything that made the story enjoyable.
Length is not the only problem, but pacing too is a significant issue, with almost two thirds of the book being dedicated to the climax of the story. It’s absolutely exhausting to have this epic battle between good and evil be drawn out over the majority of the book, especially because Chbosky keeps trying to find ways to up the stakes and introduce new twists every few chapters to the point where it starts to get a bit absurd.
Finally, the religious theming and imagery is a bit on the nose. Without giving too much away I initially thought a lot of the story’s early religious allusions were cleverly done to highlight some major issues with Christianity and blind faith, but then it’s revealed that actually they aren’t allusions at all and that all this religious stuff is actually real. It made the finale a little bit difficult to wrap my head around, and on one hand I appreciate how Chbosky manages to turn the Old Testament into a full-blown horror story, but it also came across as preachy and the way it wraps everything up just feels awkward as a result.
Aside from all that, Invisible Friend is quite excellent. Despite its faults in length, pace, and themes (I have made it sound worse than it is), Invisible Friend delivers one hell of a horror story, and it retains a lot of what made The Perks of Being A Wallflower so enjoyable.
The main thing is it’s digestible and an easy read, despite the inhumane length the chapters are very short, rarely pushing more than six pages. Plus, the language used is never complicated, a part of that stems from the story being told largely from the perspective of a seven year old, and part of it just being Chbosky’s style which never complicates itself more than it needs to.
The setup to the story is excellent. The characters of Christopher and Kate are explored excellently, and the mysteries of Mill Grove are woven in naturally and are immediately gripping. The book is split into seven acts, and I distinctly remember being completely floored by the ending to act one. The first two hundred pages or so really are the strongest in the entire book, and that’s not to say the rest of it is bad, but it’s those pages really did just fly by as I fell deep and hard into this world Chbosky crafted.
All of the characters are interesting, every single one of them, and that’s a rare to find. From the main character of Christopher, to even the most fleeting of characters like Emily Bertovich feel like real people, which is what makes the horror that much more terrifying.
Yes, the horror really is quite nasty at times. Aside from the comparisons that could easily be made to IT, Chbosky’s style feels very much cut from the Stephen King cloth here with some extremely gruesome imagery peppered throughout. Even when the book doesn’t talk about the more graphic horror, there’s plenty of time lend to child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, addiction, depression and anxiety, and much more. It’s a very grim book when Chbosky gets down to it, but crucially, like Perks, it never loses sight of that hope which prevents it from being so overwhelmingly bleak.
If you like Stephen King, then you should check out Invisible Friend. It’s the best King novel that he never wrote, which may sound like a knock on Chbosky’s individual style, but it is actually a big compliment to lend the book.
It’s indefensibly long, and whilst a lot of it is interesting, at least half of the book is fluff and could have been chopped down to provide a leaner and better paced experience.
This is definitely a book that’ll linger in my mind for some time to come, and I may even return to it again some time if I can space the best part of a month to get through it.