A thrilling surprise

Wallflower author is finally back with an absorbing, satisfying page-turner

Imaginary Friend Stephen Chbosky Grand Central

Imaginary Friend is Stephen Chbosky’s first new novel in 20 years, and it comes as a complete surprise. His only other published work, 1999’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, concerns a trio of self-styled misfits navigating the complexities of high school, adolescent angst, sexual confusion and assorted personal traumas. Over the years, that book has led a charmed life, acquiring millions of readers and serving as the basis for a popular film Chbosky himself adapted and directed. Those many readers now have something new — and unexpected — to contemplate. At more than 700 pages, Imaginary Friend is 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, Wallflower’s underlying sensibility 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 nearly every level. Perhaps its most impressive aspect is the confidence with which he 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.

That story begins with an enigmatic prologue 50 years before the primary narrative begins. Then it moves to the present day. Kate Reese and her eight-yearold son, Christopher, have just moved to the small, isolated town of Mill Grove, Pa., fleeing an abusive relationship. Christopher — lonely, dyslexic, still mourning the recent suicide of his father — wanders into a stretch of forest at the edge of town, returning home

after six days, subtly changed. And the town around him soon begins to change as well.

From this point forward, the mysteries of the woods dominate the novel, and two central premises quickly emerge. First, a disorienting alternate world — “the imaginary world” — lies parallel to our own “real” world, and it can be accessed only through portals in the woods. Second, two opposing figures are conducting an ancient war below the surface of Mill Grove, with Christopher caught in the middle.

Beneath its gaudy supernatural surface, Imaginary Friends 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. 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. 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.

The Washington Post