Andrew J. Brandt's Blog, page 2

Book Review: Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

Stephen Chbosky was, at least I thought, one of those "one-novel" guys. He's a director, a screenwriter and author of the coming-of-age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I loved Wallflower in my early-twenties, and I enjoyed the movie adaptation - which, Chbosky directed - but I never thought we'd see any further books from him.

Boy, was I wrong.

This year, twenty years after the publication of his first novel, Stephen Chbosky has delivered a doorstopper of a novel in Imaginary Friend. Where Wallflower was a short novel, sweet and lighthearted, Imaginary Friend is 700 pages of King-esque horror. In fact, in the Acknowledgements page, Chbosky thanks Stephen King for the inspiration for this story.

Imaginary Friend is a tale woven through multiple characters and perspectives, but at its core is about a seven year-old boy and his mother who have fled an abusive relationship and settle in rural Pennsylvania. The little boy, Christopher, goes missing for six days and when he reappears , things start getting weird. And he now has an imaginary friend, who he calls The Nice Man. And The Nice Man needs him to build a treehouse in the woods behind their neighborhood for some very mysterious and ominous reasons.

I loved this story, and it got really scary. It made my skin crawl, made me tear up and gave me the hilly-willies at points.

However, it's also incredibly long. I couldn't find any actual word count information online, but multiplying the words-per-page by its total of 700 pages, the novel clocks in somewhere around a quarter million words. That's Order of the Phoenix long. And, I don't mind a long novel, but I really felt like a good chunk of this novel could have been left from the printer. A little tightening up could have made this story fly. All in all, however, I loved it. I love a story that makes me feel things. If an author can make me actually cry, there's something to be said for that. Though definitely not a young adult novel due to some of the more mature aspects of the story, I really enjoyed the camaraderie of the young protagonist and his friends. It reminded me of being eight years old and having not much other than my single dad and my close friends. An evil presence haunting kids, it's reminescent of It, but not derivative to a fault.

I give Imaginary Friend a solid B+. A great story, but like I said, bring a snack because it's going to take a while to get through it.

BOOK REVIEW: The Institute by Stephen King

If you'd ever turned on AM radio at night, you may have come across Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell. When I was younger, I discovered these nighttime transmissions and found myself fascinated with the stories of aliens, time travelers, Men in Black.

12 year-old Luke Ellis is a child prodigy and sometimes when he's excited, things happen. Like an

empty pizza pan will go flying off the table. Or the kitchen cabinets will swing open. And one night, he's abducted from his home and he wakes up the next morning, finding himself in a room that looks like his room in a place called the Institute. The Institute, with its cinder block walls and Front Half and Back Half, is something out of a Coast to Coast with Art Bell story.

As much high-concept pulp fiction about telepathic and telekinetic children and saving the world, Stephen King's latest novel The Institute is also a diatribe on modern America, where children are held captive by the state for "the greater good." The people in the Institute believe, wholeheartedly, that they are doing good work, despite their harsh treatment of the kids that reside there. The kids are dehumanized, tested on, seen as nothing more than a means to an end. They're not children, they're just cogs in a wheel in a big machine.

Telepathic kids is a subject King's written on before, but here, he puts an exigent twist on a story that mirrors our current political climate.

If I had one gripe about The Institute, it would be that the middle-third of the book seemed to drone on. There were several times when I grabbed a chunk of pages and thought, "Nothing's happening." But once things started to "happen" it was like riding a rollercoaster all the way to the end.

An enjoyable read and the last third of the book is a hell of an adventure, but it's not nearly my favorite King book—that title is still held by his 2011 time travel tome 11/22/63.

Score: 3.5/5