you’re going to burn forever. It became an obsession of mine.”
All these deeply ingrained childhood horrors come into play in
Chbosky’s new novel, Imaginary Friend. It took him nine years to write
the book, and it’s being published 20 years aft er his fi rst novel, Th e
Perks of Being a Wallfl ower. Chbosky
also wrote the script and directed the
fi lm adaptation of the book.
“Most of my professional and
artistic life has consisted of making
movies and television,” he says. Most
notably, he cowrote the screenplay
for Beauty and the Beast (2017) and
directed Wonder (2017). Chbosky says he considers himself a hybrid: he’s
a novelist whose other half belongs to the movies. “Ironically, it was the
movie adaptation of Th e Perks of Being a Wallfl ower that made me fall in
love with writing novels all over again,” he says. “I do know it’s not going
to be another 20 years before I write the next book.”
In Imaginary Friend, Chbosky added an
element of horror to the vulnerability of his
main character, a young boy named Christo-
pher. “I was excited to use my ability to write
about what kids experience,” he says, “and
take it into the horror zone.”
Imaginary Friend is a novel whose title has
a double meaning: not only does seven-year-
old Christopher hear the voices of imaginary
people, but the book also poses the question:
“Who can you trust?” Is this voice in your
head really your friend? “Th e book tells us
that the only people who see things that are not there are visionaries
and psychopaths,” Chbosky says. “Th e diff erence between the two is
very slight.”
Imaginary Friend is not just a horror story; it’s also a deeply religious
book. To this day, Chbosky considers himself a Catholic and is
fascinated by Christian mythology, which he sees as the foundation
of our civilization. “Th ere are many allusions in the book to the Old
Testament and also a few to the New Testament,” he says. “Th ere are
allusions to the tree of knowledge. Sometimes the book is repetitious,
because repetition is how we learn the Lord’s Prayer, the rules and the
stories of the Bible. I combined that with the horror of the Brothers
Grimm, my own childhood fears, and my love for Stephen King.”
Th e book begins with a cloud that always appears in the same place
in the sky. Litt le Christopher sees a face in that cloud. He can speak
to it, and the cloud answers. Th e cloud leads him into the woods, and
he follows without knowing where it will take him. Chbosky says that
when he started writing the book, he also followed the cloud without
knowing where it would take him. Mostly it took him into his own
subconscious, where he faced the question, “How does one deal with
fear?” Th e book, he says, answers: “We can swallow our fear or let our
fear swallow us.”
Ultimately, Imaginary Friend celebrates the best of human qualities:
love, devotion, and goodness. “Th e ultimate point of the book is the
importance of the truth,” Chbosky says. “Telling the truth, seeing the
truth, speaking the truth, and knowing the truth in your heart can
deliver every single one of those characters. And the truth is love. All
characters in the book have some version of that. Not embracing the
truth is what keeps them in chains.”STEPHEN CHBOSKY: A READING
Sunday, Nov. 24, 3 p.m.
Building 8, Room 830212 MIAMI BOOK FAIR
©MEREDITH^ MOR
RISfree
truth
Will Set You
The
A
s a litt le boy, Stephen Chbosky was afraid of many things.
Th ere were the deep western Pennsylvania woods surrounding
his home in the township of Upper St. Clair. One could easily
get lost in those woods, and the boy was sure it was a place where evil
lurked. Litt le Stephen would warily observe the deer that oft en came
close to his house. “I always thought they were very mysterious and
frightening,” he says. Th en there was his strict Catholic upbringing. It
might not have instilled the fear of God in him, but it most certainly
instilled a deep and lasting fear of the devil. “When I was a litt le boy,
they scared the living shit out of me with the idea of the devil,” he says.
“Th ere is this horrible place and when you sin and you don’t confess,
Bestselling author Stephen Chbosky’s latest novel
is a literary horror story that celebrates love,
devotion, goodness, and the importance of truth
“Truth is love. All characters in
the book have some version of
that. Not embracing the truth is
what keeps them in chains.”FICTION BY MARIANNE SCHAEFER TRENCH