Thursday, August 30, 2012

Review: Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Green

Title: Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
Author: Matthew Green
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Sphere
Publish Date: March 1, 2012
Source: Netgalley






Why You're Reading This Book:

  • You're a fiction fan.
What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Budo is Max's imaginary friend. But though only Max can see him, he is real. He and the other imaginary friends watch over their children until the day comes that the child stops imagining them. And then they're gone. Budo has lasted a lot longer than most imaginary friends - four years - because Max needs him more. His parents argue about sending him to a special school. But Max is perfectly happy if everything is just kept the way it is, and nothing out of the ordinary happens. Unfortunately, something out of the ordinary is going to happen - and then he'll need Budo more than ever..."

My Two Cents:

"Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend" definitely has an interesting storyline. It really is told from the perspective of Max's imaginary friend, Budo. I guess I had a hard time suspending my belief. I was almost hoping that in the end, we figure out that Max is using the imaginary friend as a coping mechanism for dealing with being kidnapped. It was kind of hard for me to get over the idea that Budo, for the sake of this book, was real and could do all of the things that he did throughout the book.

This book definitely had a couple holes for me. First off, what happens to Mrs. Patterson??? (I don't want to give anything away so please excuse my intentional vagueness). The story of what she does is the major arc of the book and we never get to hear what happened to her. We really don't get to hear much about why she does what she does besides the fact that she thinks that Max's parents aren't doing what he needs in order to help him. Max has a couple issues and while it's never said what exactly those issues are, it seems like he's somewhere on the autism scale (he doesn't relate well to other people his own age, he doesn't like to be touched, he doesn't hold eye contact, etc).

What it comes down to is that I wanted to know more. Budo is sort of an interesting narrator. Even though he's an imaginary character, he's not totally omniscient so as a narrator, he's still limited as to what he can tell you about the situation.

What kept me going through the book is that the writing is really good. It's so good that I was lamenting the fact that I could not read more of the book at a time. Green pulls you in so even when I was reading and wondering about some of the things in the above paragraphs, I wasn't all that upset. I will definitely be on the look out for more of this author's books in the future!


  

8 comments:

  1. Thank you for the review on a book which was new to me.

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  2. I really enjoyed his book Something Missing-you might want to check it out. It's a fun read!

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    1. This was my first bout with this author. I loved the writing so checking out Something Missing sounds good to me!

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  3. Thanks for the review! It sounds interesting, but I would totally pick apart the holes that you found. Good to know that it might be something I should skip.

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    1. I just really got fixated with the holes! It took away a lot for me!

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  4. Though I was really engrossed in this story while reading (and actually just gave my copy to a coworker, raving about it), I see what you mean about the plot holes. Not knowing what became of Mrs. Patterson did bother me, though I chalked up her motivations to basically a psychotic break after losing her own child. It was all a little vague, though!

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    Replies
    1. I wanted to know more, mostly because I like really crazy characters.

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