“help r”
A haunted love story, the cover calls it, and it’s as good a description as any. I wouldn’t know how to summarize it, other than with superlatives and hype-words, because this is – hype, hype – in my mind, one of King’s finest. Not only one the scariest, it’s also one of the most moving, funny, poetic and complex novels King has written. Written in first person, which in itself is unusual for King, it reminds me of Peter Straub’s books, being sort of a puzzle, where you only see the whole picture as you finish it and take a step back. While you read it, it’s hard to have enough distance to analyse and discover the clues, the story being – to me, at least – hypnotically involving. Only afterwards, you see the signs for what they are. Other things that make me think of Straub are the theme of dark secrets in the past and some neat details, like mentions of “blue roses” and “Underwood”. No disrespect to Straub, though, but his novels seldom glow with life like, say, Bag of Bones.
Personal trivia: my cousin had the good sense to be in England at the same time as King, so now I own an actual signed copy of Bag of Bones. That’s nice 🙂