Palaver's Stephen King blog

“I’ll holler you home”

Almost halfway through, Lisey’s Story is still “just” a book about two married people parted by death. Lisey Landon is tending to her mentally ill sister and going through her late writer husband’s things when she gets an unwelcome visit from a “fan”. No, it’s not Misery revisited. Intimate and daringly slow-moving it seems to be what some critics surely have rushed to dub “King’s serious book”. It is, to be sure, one of King’s many serious novels, but not as realistic as one might be lulled into thinking, if that is to be regarded as an intrinsic part of gravity.

The descent into bloody madness comes late but suddenly, merely hinted at throughout the first half of the book. King pulls no punches here, as he describes a family haunted by the seemingly inevitable fate of insanity (which comes in two flavours, different but equally frightening), nor does he remain in the world of established fact (who would have guessed?).

It’s also to a certain extent about the secret language of relationships and the penchant of writers for collecting words and phrases that ring true or perhaps just interesting to them – summed up in a phrase which King himself might well have caught in i similar fashion: “Catches from the word pool”.

As challenging as “Gerald’s Game” but more sympathetic, could be one description. Echoes of “Rose Madder” can also be heard. It also begs the question: has King ever written about a happy writer?

I must confess that I found one particular part of this moving story tough to stomach. No, I won’t say which one – it may be your absolute favourite section and there’s no use in spoiling that for you. Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I can safely express my admiration for the rest of it.

Lisey’s Story, which incidentally revisits his fictional town of Castle Rock, is pure King. If anyone should have the poor sense to hail this as a step in an entirely new direction and a higher echelon of seriousness, just ignore them, they’ve obviously just been skimming through his previous books. But perhaps this is even more personal and sad than usual. Some scenes make for truly gruelling reading, but the tenderness in the story – sometimes present even in the midst of violence and madness – makes it a deeply rewarding read.

“Kashwak=NO-FO”

Cell is dedicated to, and echoes the works of, filmmaker George A. Romero and writer Richard Matheson, but it is also very much a “typical” King book – more so, some might argue, than his most recent other publications. Cellphones bring about an apocalypse perhaps more reminiscent of King’s short story “The End of the Whole Mess” than “The Stand”. What seems at first to be mere bloodthirsty madness in the afflicted turns out to be of a more “ambitious” nature. Illustrator Clay tries to find his son in a world gone mad and finds new friends along the way – enabling King to expound on themes like communication and the parallels between the human brain and a computer.

This is an extraordinarily bleak tale, swinging between stubborn hopelessness and a more alarming sort of terror, but not entirely without it’s brighter moments. They pale, however, beside all the carnage that – presented with King’s usual, inflinching eye – becomes just as tragic as it is gory.

As for similarities between “Cell” and his or others’ tales: as long as King makes all his characters alive and real, the story will always be a new one. Simple as that.

“People ignore it, mostly,” she said, “the way they always ignore things they don’t understand… as long as they can, anyway.”

In a shed belonging to a Pennsylvania police precinct, an old Buick has been standing for some time. It’s not anything as simple as haunted – like Christine, for instance. In fact, the main theme of the book may well be the frustration of not being able to solve a mystery. Curt Wilcox, and then his son Ned, try their best though – and on the way a portrait of a small police station is painted.

Sort of an anti-book in some ways and may leave some readers dissatisfied. Can’t honestly say that it’s one my personal favorites, although I appreciate what King is trying to do here (at least, what I think he’s trying to do).

“SSDD”

Revisiting both Derry, the haunted town of IT, and the bodysnatcheresque Sci-fi tone of The Tommyknockers, Dreamcatcher is a rather extreme and often stomach-turning yarn about the events following the crash of a hostile alien spacecraft in New England. Most of the story is concentrated to one or two eventful days, but there are also a number of flashbacks to the main characters’ past, as a small gang of boys in Derry become friends with a strange boy called Duddits. Dreamcatcher swings wildly between black comedy, horror and moving drama, all these emotions skillfully juggled by a King writing in long-hand, since sitting by a computer was too physically painful after his accident in 1999.

There are a number of memorable characters here, such as general Kurtz, the alien Mr Gray and, above all, Duddits. Many of my favourite scenes involve an alien using the body of Jonesy, one of the main characters, as a vehicle, trying to get used to both this strange planet and unpractical human flaws like emotions and hunger, as Jonesy meanwhile, trapped in a “room” inside his own brain struggles to thwart the alien and his evil schemes. I have a theory that the “memory palace” of Dr. Lecter in Thomas Harris’s Hannibal inspired some of these strange and fascinating scenes.