55
NINTH HOUSE
Leigh Bardugo
Ivy League secret societies
get an extra dose of mystery
and magic in Bardugo’s adult
debut, following Alex—who can
see ghosts—as she enters a
sinister social scene.
THE SECRET
COMMONWEALTH
Philip Pullman
In the second installment
of the Book of Dust trilogy,
Lyra’s daemon witnesses a
murder— leading them both to
discover hidden truths about a
haunted city.
MONSTER, SHE WROTE
Lisa Kröger and
Melanie R. Anderson
Dive into the lives of Mary
Shelley, Shirley Jackson and
more women behind legendary
spooky stories in this anthology,
which celebrates female
trailblazers in genre fiction.
A gleeful
meditation
on human
brutality
in ways that evoke timely political and
social battles; there are kids with guns,
school violence and a global refugee
crisis. One white character even tells a
Middle Eastern bystander to go “back
to where you came from.”
But the mirror Chbosky holds
to society sometimes feels dated,
particularly when it comes
to gender. The novel’s heroes
are little boys and male police
officers and veterans, while
older women and housewives
are mostly relegated to sinister
roles in the background. The
book also wields religion like
a stern cudgel, with mild sins becoming
a source of torment, yet it never explores
redemption for evildoers.
But the nine years Chbosky
reportedly spent writing the book
shows in his well-crafted scares, snappy
pacing and finely tuned plot. Despite its
faults, Imaginary Friend is well worth
the time for those who dare. •
When Kate Reese flees an abusive
boyfriend with her son Christopher,
she hopes small-town life will provide
a bright future. But the creepy cover
art and October release date suggest
a darker fate is held within the 700
twisted pages of Stephen Chbosky’s
Imaginary Friend.
Chbosky, an author and a
filmmaker, is known in pub-
lishing for his only novel,
1999’s The Perks of Being
a Wallflower. Fans of that
book should be warned:
though centered on a young
person, Imaginary Friend is
less a story of awkward youth and more a
gleeful meditation on human brutality.
Once Kate and 7-year-old Christo-
pher arrive in Mill Grove, Pa., the child
finds himself drawn to the woods by
a face in a fluffy cloud. Soon after, he
grows mysteriously smarter, suffers
painful headaches and feels a desperate
compulsion to build a tree house in the
forest. The events that follow
unravel the town and lead to
the worst Christmas ever.
There are echoes of
Stephen King here: a
town destroyed by the
supernatural, a tight group
of (male) children, religious
violence and a belief
that people are bad. But
Chbosky’s horror writing
succeeds and stands on its
own; at least a few of his
terror vignettes (so much
blood!) will stir even the
hardiest of readers.
At its core, though
packaged in a story of the
paranormal, the novel is
about recognizable human
conflict. Friends and
strangers harm one another
FICTION
Horror in the Pennsylvania woods
By Peter Allen Clark
ROUNDUP
Frights and
fantasy
These three fall books—an
appreciation of female genre-
fiction authors, a return to a
parallel world and a haunted
college story—promise to keep
readers up at night.
ÑAnnabel Gutterman
VANASCO: DENNIS DRENNER; CHBOSKY: MEREDITH MORRIS; BOOKS: KIM BUBELLO FOR TIME
▷
Chbosky wrote
and directed
the Perks
adaptation
