We Are The Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson REVIEW

High School. Ok that pretty much sums it up. Wrap it up folks, we're done here. I mean, what else comes to mind when I say High school, but an onslaught of sighs and grunts and “oh god” with several shakes of your head? Its high school! Relationship drama, get bullied, not fitting in, acne, weird and random boners during Hamlet in English class, and the whole ‘no idea what I’m going to do with my life / existential crisis’ style conversations. High school either makes you or brakes you and Henry Denton was no exception to the rule. With the weight of the world on his shoulders every day since his abductions and a cataclysmic decision ahead of him, Henry has to answer one important question: if you could save the world from blowing up, would you?

This is my review of We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson.

 

Henry Denton has been abducted by aliens, Sluggers as he calls them, with black eyes on stalks and nipples on their chest. In almost the same way you train a dog, Henry has been taught by the aliens that he has a choice to make: Save the Earth or let it be destroyed. The aliens don’t seem to care about where they drop him off because Henry is usually left in random spots all around town and at times without clothing. We learn right away that our main protagonist is experiencing an incredible loss due to suicide. Jesse was the only thing that kept Henry together and now that he’s gone, We Are the Ants starts us off with Henry experiencing an existential crisis. He lives at home with his mom, nana, and his brother Charlie.

 

Diego Vega was definitely a mystery and his character reminded me, with incredible detail, to a few actors: Ezra Miller (Patrick) from The Perks of Being a Wall Flower and Sami Outalbali (Rahim) from Sex Education; more Rahim than Patrick, but given the nature of the novel and its audience, I couldn’t help but see both of those characters in Diego. He introduces himself one day to Henry, after seeing him eat alone during lunch. Henry is confused by his actions and tries continuously to avoid Diego. His fear of attachment due to Jesse’s suicide is still fresh with him, as he struggles with accepting and not accepting that he is gone, but also escaping the thought that plagues him almost the entire book: Did Jesse kill himself because of me? Diego persists on being Henry’s friend and in turn ends up making Marcus extremely jealous.

 

Marcus is Henry’s bully and his side piece. Marcus has a lackey name Adrian.  When they weren’t pushing Henry around or calling him ‘space boy’, Marcus would reach out to Henry to get intimate. From the bathroom stalls, at Marcus’s Jacuzzi, and in his car, practically anywhere they can. When Marcus finds out that Henry is spending more time with Diego and not him, Marcus turns the heat on tormenting and torturing Henry, so much so that Henry becomes the victim in a brutal locker room beat down where Henry nearly losses his life and Marcus becomes the central suspect. Marcus’s character gets way more aggressive as the novel goes on and his methods end up being down right criminal and dangerous. Adrian, on the other hand, is more lackey to Marcus than anything else, but just as dangerous.

 

While we got the gist of a majority of characters, Audrey was a weird character and I have several feelings about her. Her appearances were random, her back story was dropped into the novel when necessary and so was her bravery. I felt I learned more from Zooey, Charlie’s girlfriend, than I did Audrey, and given how important Audrey was to Henry's growth through Jesse’s suicide, you would think a bit more would go into her arc than just being an enigma that popped in from time to time to help curve the edge of Henry's life. Perhaps that was the symbolism. We do, however, learn as we go on that Audrey was a lot closer to Jesse than Henry was. Not romantically, of course, but their friendship had developed long before Jesse and Henry got together. Even more so, long before Henry found out about Jesse’s current state of mind, which is where Audrey’s character shines the light later on to ease Henry about his involvement in Henry’s suicide.

 

Unfortunately with all novels, there is always something to be wary about and We Are The Ants is no exception. While the story does have an energy to it, I found that most of the themes were scattered haphazardly, especially the whole alien bit. That part of the novel is never fully completed and I found myself waiting for the end of world. Towards the end, when all hell had broken loose among Henry, Marcus, Audrey, and Diego, I truly felt that Henry would get beamed up into the sky and would be given his final chance of deciding. The version in my head that I would have wanted to read would have ended with Henry deciding to destroy earth. Henry would get beamed back down and as the ruckus by the ballpark slowed down, a brilliant white light would appear in the night sky. Everyone would turn in amazement and Henry’s final line: “This was it.” It would have closed the final arc of the book, the aliens, and would have given us the final bit of closure that was left unresolved. Everyone else got their closure, which is satisfying, but the aliens having destroyed the earth would have given us closure on whether or not Henry was full of it. But more on this later on.

 

The novel is an easy read and a page turner. I more so enjoyed the occasional "end of the world" anecdotes that Shaun added. The one thing I’m unsure of is whether or not it played any vital role to the story arcs. Those chapters didn’t seem to lend the story any traction or assist Henry in anyway - which half way through I realized was just about a boy coming to grips with the suicide of his boyfriend and had absolutely nothing to do with aliens or cataclysmic end of the world stuff - But were instead a concept anthology, which by all means add more; I’m a big fan.

 

And what about those aliens? What about the end of the world? What about his abductions? After a day of letting the story and characters blend in my mind and heart, I can’t help but feel the story arcs around Henry were more symbolic than anything else. In my explanation of Audrey being a "weird character", I’ll add that she represented the present time frame, Diego played the pivotal role of the future time frame, and the trials and tribulations we endured along with Henry were his past, including Marcus, Jesse, and his family. The reference in the story ‘Remember the past, Live the present, and Write the future’ strengthens the statement a lot more when given the above context. And the aliens? Well, if there ever was a way to cope with suicide, I would say claiming aliens abducted you is pretty far out there (pun intended). Whether or not the aliens did abduct him is irrelevant. What matters here is how Henry, unbeknownst to him, moves closer to realizing that he is unable to control what has already occurred. The aliens were simply representative of that.

 

Overall, the novel has a colorful array of characters and what a way great way to infuse “Aliens” in to a story about a boy coming to grips with reality. The short anecdotal chapters about the end of the world were incredible. And if this story carries any optimism, it’s that regardless of what happens, you write your future and if you don’t hear this often, then let me say it. Everything will turn out alright.

 

Happy Readings Everyone. Till next time!

 

Shaun David Hutchinson is a Young Adult author who is well known for his fiction titles The Deathday Letter, The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley, and At the Edge of the Universe. He has an anthology series, Violent Ends and Feral Youth, as well as a Nonfiction novel titled Brave Face: A Memoir. He is expected to release A Complicated Love Story Set in Space in spring 2021 and as of this post, The State of Us was released back in June 2020. He currently resides in South Florida. You can find more information on his website at www.shaundavidhutchinson.com and you can pick up one of his novels at your local book store, Barnes & Nobles, or online in E-Reader formats for Kindle and Nook.

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky REVIEW

Let's think back to a time when life was much simpler, shall we? You are seven and a half years old, you make friends with a small group of kids from the neighborhood and play in the woods because some voice in your head told you to. Then you go missing for six days and reappear like nothing ever happened only to start building an elaborate tree house all for the sake of your newly acquainted Imaginary Friend or else we all die. Yeah, we call that the good o 'days. I couldn’t agree more. As a child, I remember running around a purgatory like state of mind while a hissing demon chased me into corners of the town. Can't you? From the incredible mind that brought you The Perks of Being a Wall Flower, comes a story that will not only bend your reality, but with an evil twist so insane, you won't know what to do. It is my pleasure to write this review for Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky.

 Spoilers NOT Included!

The story begins with Kate, the mom, and Chris, the main protagonist, on the road looking for a place to live as Kate runs from an abusive boyfriend. She had no money to her name and little food to provide Chris. She was moving from state to state, from motel to motel, in search of a better life when she finally decides on Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. Chris starts attending Mill Grove Elementary and Kate begins trying to get her life back in order by working at a nursing home called Shady Pines. As Chris starts trying to make friends, you learn that he is dyslexic. But when a mysterious entity, who is later revealed by Chris to be "the nice man", appears to Chris on the computer screen during school, Chris and Kate’s issues are completely gone, that is, not before Chris goes missing in an abandoned coal mine and is not seen for 6 days.

With his sudden return back to reality, Chris brings with him a strange energy, one that not only "cures" him of his dyslexia, but also "gives back to the community". It even helps Kate win the lottery, which gets rid of her money problems and then coincidentally leads her to buy a beautiful home right behind the Mission Street Woods. What a great imaginary friend, am I right? Of course, with most things, there is always an equal trade off. The arrangement: I take care of all your problems and in return you build a tree house in the middle of Mission Street Woods before Christmas of this year, or everyone in town will die.

The number of characters that make up the rest of the novel are quite extensive. From the first iteration of chapters in the story, you are immediately introduced to David Olson, 50 years before the events that unfold, as a kid running away and hiding from that entity in the woods that they call "the hissing lady". He is "abducted" and is never heard from again. Ambrose, David's brother, is left scarred and with doubt that his brother was abducted. He remains in Mill Grove and we meet him for the first time in Shady Pines as a much older man.

Mary Katherine is a devoted and faithful Catholic teen. She has a boyfriend named Doug, who once felt her up during a make out session near the elementary school and she thought she was pregnant; she is a virgin and that remark becomes a crucial element to her story. Her journey in the novel starts with her need to please her parents and get accepted into a good Catholic University. Running late that night, Mary's life changes when she spots Chris after his sixth day, walking out from the hills and onto the street. Her story is one of twists and turns and a perplexing ending that I would need to re-read just to understand. Chris's group of friends: Mike and Matt (Twins) and Edward Charles Anderson (Eddie), who gets the nickname 'Special Ed' by everyone in school. Jenny Hertzog and Brady Collins are bullies to Chris and his friends for the entire story, but their arcs turn horrifically dark, incredibly fast. Then there is Bobby the Sheriff, whose story is also riddled with a dark, but sad past, one that involves a girl with the painted nails who used to call her daddy. It was probably just my imagination putting two and two together, but I felt a little bit of Sheriff Belfour from Tru Blood in Bobby. Then you have this mysterious entity known as the “the nice man” who is represented as a white bag on a stick in the ground and the hissing lady who is addressed as such by the way she approaches and speaks. There are another set of characters who become crucial to the story, but only towards the ending so I won't include them, but it will make for an interesting re-read.

So what can I say about this story that isn't already on your mind? Because if you're reading this, you probably had a similar thought: This isn't like Perks! Horror? What the? Best of all, you and probably everyone else have felt the exact same feeling. Stephen decided to go from everything that was Perks and completely reinvent himself by spinning up his version of a horror novel. He is greatly inspired by Stephen King and even mentions him as his Inspiration for everything else in the acknowledgements page. And if your next questions is: is this novel even worth it? …oh Yes, it truly is.

I don’t think I've come across a novel so much like this one. It almost feels like I was watching an episode of Castle Rock or Under the Dome, which subsequently were all either written or inspired by Stephen King. The concept here is that along the way, something as innocent as an imaginary friend can turn diabolical and sinister, that even the concept of how it gets resolved is even a mystery at the very end. I think back to all the movies that have that Imaginary Friend element to it and it doesn’t feel like a good comparison. Majority of the time, the imaginary friend was someone who died and was haunting the house or a building. This novel takes reality and quite literally sends you to what "the nice man" calls the imaginary side. It places you deep in the woods and forces you to feel the snow between your toes and makes you want to jump up into a tree to get away from the snarling. Stephen can take this book and turn it into a mini-series. It has the perfect setup, cliff hangers, and attention grabbers. If you’ve watched 11/22/63, then that’s what this could ultimately be turned into.

Unfortunately with all novels, there is always something to be wary about and Imaginary Friend is no exception. My first complaint was how unstructured it all felt. The number of elements in the novel that take place happen almost all at once. You have elements and themes of religion, good vs evil, relationship / family dynamics, end of the world apocalyptic, morality, and a bunch of others. It also doesn’t give you a moment to breathe, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, but it did lead to waves of story arcs that either made no sense, were hard to follow along, or were entangled with a few other themes that it sort of left me wanting to speed things up with those character arcs. For example, Mary Katherine's arc. From the get go, I found myself thinking how unfortunate she was. She was in the story to be in the 'makes you feel bad' character, to be somewhere she wasn’t supposed to, to cause some sort of scene out on the road just at the right time for everything to unfold. This continues to happen all throughout the novel, even in the end. She just ends up in inconvenient places when everything is sort of happening and does nothing but makes it worse. This bothered me because after all the ups and downs of her haphazard story arc, we get the ending that we did and I've yet to understand how any of it is even possible, or better yet, WHY? Why Mary Katherine and why THAT ending?

Another complaint / problematic moment was when I realized the expectations that "the nice man" has of these 7 to 8 year old children. He demonstrates great effort in being able to control everyone in town, so why not use the older, more capable men to build the tree house and then let the children run free into the imaginary side. Since I know now what the motivation was and how It pans out, I feel "the nice man" would have had a much easier time with all this. Literally less planning, more execution, little delays, everything. Or perhaps I've given too much away. My final complaint was the pacing in the novel, which really has more to do with how the story sounds when read out loud versus when you read it in your head. Too many pauses. So many. Stops. Way too many. To even begin to count. The element presented in this writing style is equivalent to verbally telling a story and pausing to enhance either the suspense or actions of characters or situations. That being said, the pausing was all over the place. Practically the whole freaking book! Some parts flowed smooth while others took too long to get through; the rest was a regular book with proper punctuation. I don’t think I would have had such a problem with it if perhaps it was used during crucial moments of suspense, but Chris looking at clouds is not suspenseful. It doesn’t even borderline horror. Even if we do see a face in the clouds, it wouldn’t have been story worthy. You know how many kids and adults see things in the clouds? True story, I looked out my window last week. And saw a dragon. In the clouds. I looked away. For a split second. Long enough to see the shape dissipate.

But, in all honesty, I genuinely and wholeheartedly enjoyed every minute of this novel. It was exactly what I was looking for when I searched up and down the aisles of Barnes and Noble. I stack five or more seemingly interesting books on top of one another and get a peek at the first chapter of each; may the best one win. Imaginary Friend is definitely a page turner. Each chapter is a true and horrifying cliff hanger, right down to the punctuation. The use of empty space in the whole novel enhanced the story and even the use of various fonts to emphasize when the demon spoke was well executed. Stephen at one point used a method that reminded me of what Mark Z. Danielewski did in House of Leaves in which he uses one full page with just one word on it. I love it. The twist in the novel is perfectly executed and I kid you not, there was no way to shut me up after that. "What? No way? Oh my god how?" I said loudly, over and over again. I had to reread that chapter from how excited I was because I just couldn’t believe it. You would think that after watching tons of horror movies I would have picked up on the twist, but this one definitely caught me by surprise. Stephen Chbosky you have left me waiting eagerly for your next novel.

 

Happy Readings Everyone. Till next time!

 

Stephen Chbosky is the author to the popular YA novel from 1999, The Perks of being a Wallflower. In 2012, he directed the movie that follows the book, starting Emma Watson, who subsequently collaborated with Stephen Chbosky to write the ending to the film. Imaginary Friend is his second novel. You can find both of these novels at your local book store, Barnes and Noble, or online in E-reader formats for Kindle and Nook.