Opening sentence: Ruby said I'd never drown - not in deep ocean, not by shipwreck, not even by falling drunk in someone's pool.

 

 

Well that was bizarre and not at all like i expected. still really good read though. I kind of felt like this book or should i say writing enchanted me, I just wanted, needed to keep reading it, to find out all its secrets, what really happened. Even though this book was filled with stuff that should of been entirely boring i wasn't in the slightest bored. I suppose thats what good writers do, they suck you in no matter whats written on the pages.

 

The characters were....interesting and to me really American. similar to what i would picture bumpkin american's to be like without the extreme stereotype's.

 

The ending was not quite what i expected, we were lead at every turn, and even though i knew this book was fiction, for some strange reason i expected it to be written more like non-fiction. but i suppose the younger sister, our protagonist, Chloe has cracked and isn't telling us (the readers) the truth. throughout the book she clearly wasn't a very reliable narrator, so its hard to tell.

 

Either way i rather enjoyed myself, I'm pleased I randomly stumbled across Imaginary Girls and decided to read it.

 

Great cover by the way - doesn't completely fit in with the story line but its good. 

 

 

Random Quote i enjoyed:

 

"I looked up into the sky, and her balloons were everywhere, it seemed, the air marred with bloody streaks and littered with demands, and nothing and no one could stop them from coming."

The title is the basic thesis; it's expanded to suggest that one only notices this about one's own family; everybody else's family seems sane and normal.

 

Well, the family presented here are faaaaar crazier than my family, which has a history of real, actual mental health problems. They're nuts in the sense that they are almost entirely a-moral and don't seem to know or care. My family isn't like that at all and I don't actually know any families as crazy as the Drummonds are.

 

Ah, yes, back-up; the Drummonds. They are introduced in a manner I can only describe as similar to having a cold omelette flung in your face. It happend really fast and most of it rapidly sank to the floor. I only retained a little by way of eggy fragments; most of the convolutions of the various relationships whizzed by or dripped down. Fortunately as the book went on I was able to figure it all out. Perhaps the problem was only that I was too sleepy when I read the opening part of the book.

 

Anyway, the Drummonds all slowly get tangled up in an increasingly crazy and unlikely adventure and the weirdest ever fairy godmother fixes everything at the end. It's a short, fast paced, humourous but preposterous book, more in the vein of JPod, Microserfs or Shampoo Planet than Generation X or Eleanor Rigby.

 

An entertaining, funny story but not in the least profound.

Despite a decent prose style, this was one of those books where I pulled out before fifty pages, because I just didn't find the characters and situations believable enough to invest time and caring upon. We learn before we reach ten pages that Sarah Drummond, a thalidomide baby with one hand, is a NASA astronaut. Not just a mission specialist mind you--and that alone would have been hard enough to buy--but the pilot of the space shuttle mission about to launch. Soon after that, we learn that "astronauts are always tiny, chosen for their lack of body mass." Well, I guess a lack of a hand might help there, but really I was soon convinced Coupland had never even googled "astronaut" or "NASA." Sarah's older brother Wade has AIDS. From what I can gather from before I left, he gave it to his mother via magic bullet when his father shot him and the bullet passed through him hitting his mother. Oh, and the reason his father shot at him was because he learned Wade was sleeping with his stepmother--who then gets AIDS. The other brother Brian, who has tried to commit suicide three times, brings his pregnant girlfriend to the shuttle launch. Her name is "Shw" in honor of "Sogetsu Hernando Watahabe--a martyred hero of the Peruvian Shining Path terrorist faction." By the time we learn that Wade is bringing his father into a drug deal, I decided that it wasn't simply the Drummond family or all families that are psychotic, but the author. And not in the whacky surreal way that allowed me to go with the flow and laugh.

The last time I read Douglas Coupland was in the 1990s, and while I'm not sure his fiction will age well over time, I was hoping his talent would transcend the moment in which he wrote. I'm not sure if the book is too dated for me, or if my reading priorities have changed, but I was disappointed. The characters in this family are kind of kooky and awful, but I didn't see the humour in their awfulness. Maybe I've been spoiled by the incredibly well-written and flawlessly-executed Arrested Development, but I failed to make any emotional connection to the characters in this book. Even so, I might have gone on to finish it if I hadn't accidentally picked up and started a much more engaging book. Once I'm finished that one, I don't see myself coming back to finish this one.

Now I have always been a weird and delusional kid… even before I became obsessed with reading, because, Baby… I was born this way

I remember I was 12yrs old and I went to my first concert to see Lil’ BowWow perform….

I was so excited! I was a huge BowWow fan!

“You just don't know!
The way he moved so fast across the floor…
he was running through my mind, like all the time
To the point that I just wanna take him home”

Lol I’m not kidding!

 While he was performing, I had all these thoughts in my head about running in to him back stage and telling him how amazing he was… and then we’ll stare into each other eyes and fall in love…..

So of course my overactive imagination will only grow more delusional when I started reading.

For Example, while reading City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare, I inserted myself into the book. Not just reading the book and thinking about how I would react in that situation. No I put myself  In The Book….

Now take a minute to digest that….

I made myself a character… and not just any character, a main character…she was a witch and not just any witch….she was also half fairy…

She had a demon mark of course!

A pair of angel wings, that she can fold into her body, so she can wear regular human clothes, and natural blue hair gifted from her fairy genetics.  I debated heavily on whether or not she had a lion tail…. Still not sure…

Hmmm…

Yep…I had a character description….and a plot.

Here’s the jist of it.

My character was held since birth by the Seelie Queen as punishment for the demon who dared to impregnate a fairy. After years of being imprisoned, my character breaks out of the Seelie Court, using some Expelliarmus charm she learned in a dream from a mysterious man who gave who gave her one mission… Find the High Warlock of Brooklyn…..

There’s more to it but think leave for a part 2…..or not…I don’t want scare you awesome people away with my crazy thoughts.