Author: Nova Ren Suma
First Published: June 2011
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
348 pages (hardcover)
Imaginary Girls is a kind of story you don’t really encounter too often in YA books. Most people label it as a paranormal or supernatural book, but I think it’s closer to surrealism. Surrealism isn’t something YA authors write about very often so if you exclusively read YA, chances are you haven’t come across this type of story, but I really enjoy surreal stories so it was a pleasant surprise to run into it here. Be warned; surrealism isn’t for everyone. If you’ve never read surrealism, you’ll probably think such stories are just “weird” or “doesn’t make sense.” Some people seem to hate it, some seem to love it. Really depends on your cup of tea.
Imaginary Girls is mainly about two sisters named Ruby and Chloe. Chloe is the younger one, by five years, and the narrator of this story. These two sisters are incredibly close and will literally do anything for one another, though the relationship balance is not equal — Ruby thinks she knows what’s best for Chloe and dictates everything, whereas Chloe is in awe of her sister and will listen to everything Ruby says. The girls live in a small town by a reservoir that is out of bounds, but parties are frequently held there anyway by the teenagers of the town.
The story opens up with one such party, where Ruby brags that her little sister is such a great swimmer, she can swim across the reservoir. Chloe, being obedient, attempts the swim but runs into a floating rowboat with the dead body of a girl named London, a girl she knows from her class. Flash forward, Chloe is living with her dad (the girls have different fathers) away from town, but Ruby forces Chloe to come back and live with her, acting like London never died. When Chloe returns to the small town with Ruby, she finds everything very peculiar. London is, indeed, alive, and what’s more, Ruby has some strange way of making everyone in town do exactly as she says.
I quite enjoyed this book. The writing is really great and the dialogue felt real and not cheesy. As I said, I do like surrealism so I had no problem slipping into the story. Like Chloe, I was tossed into a dream-like world where I wasn’t sure if what was happening was REALLY happening or not. I felt a bit haunted while reading this book. You know something is not quite right, it’s almost like there’s an element of creepiness. I wasn’t sure if there really was some super powers happening here, or ghosts or what, but it was about halfway through the book that I decided that this was a surrealistic story. I guess you can say “magical realism” too, which would be another label if you like labels.
Then there’s Chloe and Ruby’s relationship, which is the big focus in this novel. Ruby is someone the entire town practically worships. She gets her way with everything and all the boys want to date her. Chloe, too, looks up to her sister, obsessed with her as much as Ruby is obsessed with herself, but with her return to town, she senses that it’s strange how everyone just does whatever Ruby says. Ruby’s not exactly a kind person. She’s self-centered to the extreme and acts like the entire world was created for her and her sister. Chloe is the only person Ruby cares about. It’s an interesting relationship where Chloe is the only person who has potential to “control” Ruby, but she doesn’t. Ruby has everyone under her spell. Ironically, because I’m a third party looking into the story from the outside, I didn’t really like Ruby. Brilliantly written characters with great dialogue, but if I met Ruby in real life, I wouldn’t like her one bit, haha. Chloe is a bit of a doormat and doesn’t seem to have much of a personality, which sounds like a bad thing, but works great in this book because she’s always in Ruby’s shadow so it makes perfect sense.
This is a character-driven book so there isn’t a whole lot of plot per se, so some readers may find the book slow moving. But the relationship of Chloe and Ruby, or even just Ruby, is so fascinating to read the pages do seem to fly by. Slowly, you realize Ruby is just a messed up person and super manipulative. Slowly, you realize your narrator isn’t really any better than Ruby, she’s just a less intense version of her. Sometimes I doubted whether Chloe was a reliable narrator or not and it made me question a lot of the events in the book. There are so many times where I thought, “Is this really happening? Or is someone going to wake up and say it was all a dream?”
This is without a doubt a brilliantly written book and if you enjoy surreal fiction, you definitely want to check out Imaginary Girls.
My Rating: 4/5
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