The Pillow Friend

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From the critically acclaimed author of The Mysteries comes a haunting, lyrical, and provocative novel of a young woman’s coming-of-age betwixt dream and reality. Here there’s only one thing more dangerous than desire—getting what you want.... As a child, Agnes Grey dreamed of the perfect friend to ease her loneliness: a doll that would talk to her, tell her stories, share her secrets. Only her aunt Marjorie seemed to really understand. Something of an outcast herself, she told Agnes she’d had just such a doll when she was a child. She called it her pillow friend. So when Agnes receives her very own pillow friend—an old-fashioned porcelain doll painted to look like an old-world gentleman—she’s certain her dreams have come true. And so they have—but in ways that Agnes could never have imagined. For as the line between fantasy and reality blurs, Agnes discovers that every dream has its price and every desire must be paid for. Be very careful what you wish for...he’ll surely give it to you.Amazon.com ReviewNeglected and disturbed, Agnes craves a perfect companion, a friend who will share and understand all. When she's seven, it's a doll; when she's 13, it's a horse; when she's 17, it's a first lover; when she's 22, it's a dreamy poet of a husband. But magic is tricky -- be careful what you wish for. This dark, complex fantasy novel asks the age-old question, at times in a shockingly literal fashion: Can you have your cake and eat it, too?From Library JournalAgnes Grey, a young girl living in Houston, gets a doll from her aunt. The doll, whom she names Myles, is a pillow friend. He will sleep with her and tell her stories, as he did when he belonged to Aunt Marjorie. But Myles seems to inhabit Agnes's mind and influence her actions. The reader?as well as Agnes?isn't sure what is real and what is a dream or a fantasy. As Agnes gets older, her real life and her dream life fuse so completely that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. She meets her favorite poet (who is also her dream lover), and they marry (or do they?). When her mother dies suddenly, Agnes discovers something the reader will have guessed. The denouement is stunning. This novel shows us that what we hide from ourselves, and what we make up, may be more real than reality itself. For most popular collections.?Barbara Maslekoff, Ohioana Lib., ColumbusCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.