Friends only in my head...

This was a great summer read.  This was a truly unique concept as this is the story of an autistic boy (undiagnosed) and his imaginary friend.  The story takes place over two weeks, and it is a really quick read.  It did get under my skin a bit and I was anxious to finish the book last night to see how things evolved.   There were parts I found a ... meh ... for lack of a better word, but overall this book does work. This is a book about imagination, and I loved reading about the lives of our imaginary friends, and how they exist, and then how they cease to be.  This is a bit of a magic book in the sense that it opens up your mind to remember a bit of your childhood, to think about why kids invent or have imaginary friends, and then even to consider the power of our imaginary friends.

I stumbled across the author's website, and he seems like quite the character himself.  It is a whole different element of reading and consuming books that their authors are so much more accessible now.  I remember reading the Black Stallion series when I was a kid, and I wrote to Walter Farley... only to find out after the fact that he was an older gentleman and likely no longer answering fan mail (back in the stone ages we didn't have wikipedia to look this kind of information up).  Now we can use social media and connect, or lurk through the net and see what has been posted.  It is a good and bad thing this whole idea of celebrity and what is "out there".

Well worth a read - likely it would have been fun to have discussed at our book club last month.  Maybe I can sneak in a few words or questions and see what the other folks thought of it.