The Pillow Friend [Hardcover]

Lisa Tuttle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1996

Agnes Grey is troubled by her mother's depressive and erratic mood-swings, so the young girl retreats into a delusional dream state where she finds that made-up relationships are more gratifying and often more tangible than her real ones. As Agnes enters adulthood, her fantastical relationships and their consequences become deceivingly real, with a chilling and bizarre aftermath.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Neglected 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 Journal

Agnes 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., Columbus
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: White Wolf Publishing; First Edition edition (July 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565049381
• ISBN-13: 978-1565049383
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,301,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wishes don't make something real, April 12, 2006

By 

Judah (Terre Haute In USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pillow Friend (Paperback)

Neil Gaiman is my favorite author, and I'd never heard of Lisa Tuttle. I bought the book based on Gaiman's glowing recommendation on the front cover.

The first part was everything I hoped for. An interesting story of a little girl and her mysterious doll. I liked young Agnes a lot, but then...

Then the novel moves away from the theme of wishing and consequences as Agnes ages. The entire middle section of the novel, over a hundred pages, became incredibly boring. Soap Opera romance-on, romance-off, make-up-your-mind boring. I'm not an indecisive romance person.

Summation: the beginning of the book was fantasy, the middle romance (realistic romance too, that left me hating the characters for acting so stupid), and the end madness tinged horror.

After finishing the story, forcing the middle, I felt disappointed. No resolution at all. The book did explore the consquences of wanting something, but never bothered with the issue of 'is what I want, what I need?' If Agnes decided what she wanted was what she needed, the story would have been awesome. Instead, Agnes is afraid to examine the mechanisms behind what is happening to her, and the book ends with a feeling of 'this is what happened, the END.' As a reader, you are left to interpret the novel and what it means.

My interpretation was the author wanted to be cryptic, surreal, and fulfilling. She got two out of three. This is the type of book college professors call literature, and people like me think of as interrupted dreams. You never know how they end, and forget them later in the day.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Its just rather...odd, February 17, 2006

By 

oodles "oodlesofbooks" (MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pillow Friend (Paperback)

Hmmm, I've finished this book a couple days ago and I'm still not sure whether I liked it or not. It was definately entertaining, and it pulled me in and kept me up to late. But first it started out like a pleasant fantasy story...a mysterious aunt, a maybe magic doll, an imaginary horse. And then there is some kind of freaky teen experience. Then it gets really normal for a while..just a pretty regular relationship between the woman and an ordinary man, who is not so wonderful as her illusions have made him out to be. And then....it gets really darn freaky for a bit..not sure if I want to spoil it for anyone but there is a distinct "ewwwww" factor to one bit. But I kept reading to the end, hoping it would all make sense by the end and...well it never quite did. I'm not sure whether the main character is some sort of magical witchy person, or just plain mentally ill, or what. So it kind of left me quite disappointed at the end. THe finish was a big let down.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful - poetic - sweet, August 14, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pillow Friend (Hardcover)

Having just read the other reviews here at Amazon, I'm suprised because they don't show the book at all as I saw it. It's very poetic. Very sweet. Very real-feeling. The "horror" element is slight. It's much more a novel about love, and close relationships than it is a fantasy. As such many many of the scenes and emotions described are straight from real life. And Lisa Tuttle has a delightful way of expressing them so poetically yet so clearly that you find yourself saying "Oh my gosh, yes that's exactly how that situation feels! How suprising that not only have other people felt the exact same way as me... and that an author could explain it so much better than I ever could!" The pick-up scenes, conversations between men and women about sex and relationships, relationships between parents and children, and very bright children and their beloved books. These are all written better in this novel than I have read them in years. This is a great novel of real life much more than a "horror" or a "fantasy" and you will not be able to put the book down until you've finished it!