Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks

Amy  

fiction, young adult

I did not realize that this book is narrated by the imaginary friend referenced in the title. It’s a clever idea and allows the reader to have an insider’s view of the child from whom the imaginary friend exists. However, the imaginary friend is a little too insightful and observant to be believable. Otherwise, I might have enjoyed this book more. Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend is the story of Max, an 8-year-old, as told by his imaginary friend, Budo.  It covers a short period of time in Max's life and includes flashbacks to provide character history.

As the imaginary friend of an elementary school student with limited powers of observation, it didn’t feel right that Budo would have the psychiatric insight that he had. I could believe in all the freedom the imaginary friend possessed and even the rules of the “imaginary friend world” by which he “lived”. But, when the imaginary friend goes from speaking and acting like an elementary school student to showing the extremely mature powers of deduction and understanding on several occasions, the author, Matthew Dicks, lost my favor.

Additionally, I didn’t realize it when I started this book, but it feels geared toward middle grades. While I do love young adult novels, middle grade novels don’t tend to bring me a high level of personal enjoyment. This one, though, contains about a dozen f-bombs. Those words were not necessary to get the point of the story across (although, it definitely was expected and believable from those characters) and their frequent presence makes me think that maybe the author was really attempting to gear this novel toward an older audience. But, I don’t feel he was successful. In contrast, I can think of another book with a young narrator, Room by Emma Donoghue, which was very successfully geared toward grown-ups.

The best part of the novel was the last 15% and I appreciated the suspense, growth, and the brave actions of Max and the friends. But, the other “suspense” in the novel up until that time felt more like forced stalling and delaying in an attempt to build suspense. It was a nuisance since I was listening to the audiobook and could not just skim over the sections that seemed to serve no other point. Incidentally, the reader of the audiobook did a wonderful job!

In summary, the crafting of the novel was creative, the story had a lot of heart, the characters were well-drawn, but it didn't really interest me until the end.