Palaver's Stephen King blog

Part dark satire about those who “do their own research”, part drama with a strong theme of writing and poetry, part detective thriller with a theme of aging, this is King the commentator and terrifyer rolled into one. 

She even has her own novel now, having started out as a supporting character in Mr Mercedes. After the Bill Hodges trilogy, the socially awkward but now significantly happier Holly Gibney carried on in The Outsider and If it Bleeds, and now this. 

But in typical King fashion she is nowhere to be seen at the start of the book, set in 2012. Instead we meet a man who we are told won’t live much longer. Then we meet the elderly couple who abduct him. Academics and, apparently, evil. Reading 1793 in parallel makes his troubles seem somewhat tame in comparison but there’s no doubt that he’s in trouble. Being forced to eat raw liver is not the end of it, this we already know. 

Then Holly appears, attending a Zoom funeral in the midst of the pandemic, trying to find solace in the fact that “Trump’s gone” but prophetically fearing a 2024 comeback. This time-hopping continues, sending us back to 2015 once we’ve learned that Holly has lost her mother and that King really doesn’t like Donald Trump. And so it goes. The abductee of 2018 is different, managing to get under their skin. We also see this particular episode from the perpetrators’ perspective. Given the obvious pattern, and seeing as how Holly is hired for a missing person case in 2021, it’s not a stretch to guess that Bonnie Dahl, a young librarian, is that year’s victim. But perhaps there’s hope for Bonnie, at least? After all, Holly is on the case. One certainly hopes so upon finding out why the Harrises do what they do. 

Holly is simply put a perfect reminder of why I never really tire of the King. Each dialogue echos of the real world, the locations feel like snapshots from said world, which somehow makes it interesting with and without killers. Holly’s approach to everything, part OCD, part genuine attention to detail, is printed on every page. Her general unease in many situations contrasted with her work skills and her interactions with her few but close friends (like the Robinsons, established in previous stories) remain interesting and awkwardly endearing. Besides the case, Holly also has to come to terms with what should be great news but also reveals uncomfortable truths. Interspersed with the present are also numerous flashbacks to a childhood under the thumb of a mother given to belittling her daughter at every turn. 

The elderly couple can be as thoughtful and loving toward each other as they are careless about others, which is brilliantly creepy. The glimpses inside their thoughts are not ones into mental hellscapes but rather reveals oddly practical mindsets, not without quirks but certainly not focused on creating suffering for others. They are, above all, utterly selfish in the most concrete way imaginable. The suffering and murder are just byproducts. 

Jerome’s visit to the mother of the youngest victim also deserves special mention. King can write well about anything but the way he writes about addicts is peerless. Jerome’s sister Barbara also becomes something of an occasional main character in a book with a sub-theme of poetry. Her meeting with a very old poet is more King than any horrific scene you can think of. The King who delights in honest exchange between different equals and finding the exact right lines. Some of his characters, like the keenly observant Olivia, may be ‘too good’ but they are meant to be, to inspire. 

“Do you understand that you are good at this?”

One sub-theme is race. For example Black people getting shot by the police, a topic almost as symptomatic of the early 2020s as Covid. The whole book feels like a snapshot from a time very recent but so dramatic it already feels like history. 

Like any detective story, it involves a great many meetings with possible witnesses or other information sources. Each interview, almost, contains the element of Covid. Is the subject vaxxed and masked, are they sceptics or downright scornful? 

The premise, taken to a twisted extreme, could be: what if an elderly couple who still love one another decide that it’s their right to do anything to counter the toll of time, to stay sharp and smart and alleviate the ails of age? Their only true loyalty and empathy are for each other. And then make their victims real. King real. 

Old age is a theme again, of course, with Olivia’s creaky energy and no-nonsense dedication providing a more inspiring example. In King’s world, decent people say rude things and mean well while bad people watch their language in public. 

It works. It always does. 

Holly is, just like Mr Mercedes, a detective story where we know whodunnit. The Agatha Christie kind of twist can be found in his work, notably Joyland, but is rarely the most important part. The most important part here is … all the themes he manages to combine in it, plus friendship, suspense and horror.

And it contains the phrase “scimitar smile” which would be a great name for a band if I’ve ever heard one. 

An airplane, a request that somebody give up their seat for a government agent. Tim
takes the offer and embarks on a hitchhiking trip, leading to a small town in South Carolina where there is work to be found for a former police officer such as himself. As a “night knocker”.

America. Nobody writes it better. 

”They exchanged the desultory conversational gambits of mere acquaintances.”

As is common with King, the protagonist is an unglamorously decent person who treats others with respect and sees the good as well as the bad in strangers. Ordinary human interaction is the subject matter for much of the beginning of the book.  

Less ordinary is Luke Ellis, a hugely gifted twelve-year-old. He is barely introduced before he is abducted by shadowy agents and finds himself in a windowless replica of his own room. 

We’ve been here before. These are classic King elements, now condensed to acronyms like TK and TP, in a setting bringing both ‘The Shop’ and the dutiful creatures trying to break the beams in the Dark Tower series to mind. The Institute comes across as a dilapidated but brutally run holdover from the Cold War, dusty but deadly. As for the people running it, we are offered multiple perspectives and allowed an inside view into an organisation that the children they hold captive can only guess, or perhaps telepath, about. It is familiar ground but made more fertile by current events. Of course King gives Donald Trump a little swipe in passing early on, and it won’t be the last. As for a big theme of the book, imprisoning children, it is more than a swipe. 

As for the technicians and doctors working in this hidden prison, they might consider themselves working bees only doing their jobs, or perhaps even doing Important Work, but when King lets a character muse that they may be ‘damned’ he’s clearly not letting them off the hook. Personal responsibility in the face of orders from above is another theme highly relevant for our times. 

The kids themselves, preteens and teens, bond in their confusion and temporary shared misfortune. Temporary, because after a while they move on to another part of the institute. Taking steadily darker turns, The Institute feels painfully real when describing the often crude methods employed by indifferent or even contemptuous adults to get ‘results’. But when the attempts to increase his skill set to telepathy actually seem to work and Luke successfully hides this fact, he may have an edge. Especially when joining forces and minds with a few others. A thrilling escape attempt is the obvious next step, replete with the ordeals King usually provides for his protagonists. Success must never be cheap. The details about train yard logistics offered around the halfway mark are less thrilling, however, but it is endearing how King still finds new topics to research for his books. Keeps him young, I guess. 

The scenes from the perspective of the people in charge of the Institute are both depressing and chilling, especially in “Back Half”. Where children are broken down and sent on. Where a grimy sign might dutifully proclaim: 

“Remember these were heroes”

Dark. But there is also a sense of classic King adventure here, with a young protagonist facing perils that would give grownups pause – not unlike The Talisman. 

Some two thirds in, The Institute has grown into the perfect thriller. Equal parts hope and fear, in two parallel story lines. The kindness of strangers and the petty greed of ‘stringers and uncles’. It’s a book demanding to be filmed, much like Under the Dome before its pitch black finale. Will this too veer into “too much darkness” or hold the course, a reader might be forgiven for wondering. For thinking “please just let these kids find a way to get out before …” Even if the work of the Institute should actually turn out to be vital. 

I won’t spoil but I will say that there is the kind of chaotic shoot-out of which King is sometimes a bit too fond. But it doesn’t end there. Far from it. 

Footnote
Don’t miss the moving afterword about King’s longtime research assistant, Russ Dorr. 

“The incredible lightness of being”

A short story published in the form of a book, one might say. And why not. King has previously published short novels bundled into collections, as if they were short stories. The man can do what he likes.

Elevation is Thinner, but exactly the opposite in every way. Like the protagonist of Kings’s dark Bachman tale, Scott Carey is becoming lighter. Not exactly losing weight but simply applying less and less pressure on the scales. It is, of course, impossible which, of course, won’t stop King from writing about it and making you believe it. 

In keeping with his desire to keep up, King makes his sympathetic protagonist a web designer and has obviously done some research, though not on as detailed a technical level as in Mr Mercedes. Castle Rock is here presented as a normal town with well-todo people and a golf course. A town people from elsewhere would gladly visit for a charity race. ’Inside view’ and ’The Night Flier’ flutter by as references. The story also involves a newly arrived lesbian couple running a restaurant but having a hard time with the conservative locals. 

The weight mystery is mainly a positive experience for Scott. The “Turkey trot” running competition becomes an occasion to surprise the town with an impressive performance, enhanced by a profound joy brought on by just about everything around and inside him. His heart, “that sturdy little engine”, the sound of running feet on a covered bridge. Even as a strange impending doom draws near, he’s having the time of his life and making new friends. You’d be forgiven for cynically wondering when everything is going to turn bad. 

Will it? I won’t say more than that it’s a story not only about a strange phenomenon but about friendship and reconciliation as well. Touching and heart-felt, Elevation may not be a Real novel, but it’s a more memorable story than many thrice as long. It’s also unironically message-y, pointing to a better way in a divisive time, and, dare I say it, uplifting. 

But of course he sneaks in one overt jab at a certain president.

“(…) which would have been bad – even Trumpian – diplomacy”

”Do you always know who did it when you sit down to write?”

A terrible crime has been committed in Flint City. Ralph Anderson, one of the town’s three police officers, has a prime suspect and decides to make the arrest a public affair. The popular Coach Maitland, uncomprehending, is brought away in cuffs in the middle of a game, in front of a big crowd and his family. He is just as stunned as Anderson is sure of his guilt. It’s a perfect, vivid example of building conflicting loyalties in the reader. What is one to believe? 

As events unfold, interspersed with witness protocols that certainly points to Maitland being the head suspect, this sense of ambiguity only deepens. Along with his family he seems a victim of a terrible mistake, but if guilty of the vile crime he is in fact a monster. What is one to believe…?

It’s one of those books that grab you from the get go and pulls you in, skipping between the various victims of the obscene crime, including the family of the murdered boy, whose suffering has only begun. Those parts offer some of the book’s best prose, wise, unexpected and moving perspectives on tragedy and grief.

“They watched without talking, each in his own way exploring the edges of the hole that had appeared in their lives, so as not to fall in.”

But the suspect and his family also draw sympathy in their plight. Here, everyone is a victim. The tragedies of The Outsider are manifold. The crimes destroy surviving family members and people’s good name. It’s the final insult added to the injury, how seemingly innocent suspects become the object of hatred and anger. 

The sudden introduction of elements that seem otherworldly do little to lessen interest but may prompt the reader to wonder what kind of book they are reading. The answer will become clearer with each chapter. Genre aside, it’s most definitely a solid page-turner. It hooks you. It’s also damn spooky. The phrase ’straws for eyes’ alone is enough to give one shivers. But like any detective story worth reading, it’s also an excuse to send people around, meeting other people, asking questions from witnesses and incidentally painting little portraits of life outside of the limelight. And King is, of course, very good at that. 

In its attention to detail, The Outsider can occasionally also get … tedious. There are times when points are belaboured. Like the last Hodges book, it’s also a bold mix of the pragmatic and the supernatural, and may not be to everyone’s taste. For my own part, I’m frankly not exactly sure how I feel about it. But meeting Holly Gibney (from the aforementioned Bill Hodges books) again is great, and King once more excels at portraying a character inherently nervous and uneasy about human interaction, but very brave. Around her, a band of unlikely friends will form, bringing Bram Stoker’s Dracula to mind in more ways than one. 

At the end of it all, The Outsider is more akin to Doctor Sleep than Mr Mercedes. It’s a both moving and harrowing story with a thrilling climax. Whether or not you entirely “buy it” may be a matter of taste. 

“Knowing how something works and what it is are two very different things.”

A story about losing faith and looking for other things in its place. But one dedicated to a veritable Who’s Who list of classic horror writers and featuring references to De Vermis Mysteriis. How very King. And like the cautionary tales of old, it’s a tale wherein the narrator wants to tell his whole story, not just the juicy bits.

The new minister in the Methodist church seems like a nice guy to six-year-old Jamie, youngest in a big family, growing up in the shadow of the Cold War in the 60s.

Written from the first person perspective and initially set in the small town of Harlow, Maine, not far from Castle Rock, the story in general seems nice enough at first, encapsulating childhood with King’s usual  deftness. Apart from a deeply ominous prologue, that is. Early on, though, Jamie underscores that this book isn’t about happy childhood memories. And it isn’t. It’s not even primarily about childhood. In fact, it’s just as much about aging. And its inevitable consequence.

Reverend Jacobs is interested in electricity. He employs it as a teaching aide during youth nights, to the point where parents and children alike find it a bit overmuch. He also finds other uses for it. For example a small miracle, which brings joy. Then utter tragedy strikes the minister’s family, described in King’s typical unflinching manner. The “terrible sermon” that follows makes Jacobs’s continued service an impossibility. To young Jamie, though, it’s as if the truth has finally been told.

Later, Jamie discovers music. The electric guitar, of course. King delights as much in describing the joy of this discovery, as well as the young love affair to follow, as he excels at describing horror. When presenting Jamie as a junkie, I should add, we also get to enjoy King the dark comedian, relishing this chance to bring life at rock bottom to, well, life. Not unlike some scenes in Dr Sleep. One wonders if King is campaigning to warn Constant reader of the dangers of drugs or if he simply writes what he knows.

The two meet up later in life, when things are very different for both of them. Electricity is still very much a thing for the former reverend. Much more so, in fact. But the things he can do, ranging from cheap tricks to mysterious healing, seem to have after effects.

“Something. Something. Happened. Happened.”

Somehow the spookiest line I’ve read in ages.

Later still, Jacobs is a travelling preacher and healer. Even if the rev’s new-old career might be a ruse, the description of a revival tent meeting has elements of genuine warmth. And crass deceit, as well. And, still, the electricity.

Like 1922, it’s a story you’d be forgiven for abandoning before the end. But whereas 1922 begins almost at rock bottom, “Revival” presents the good times first, or rather interspersed between the bad ones. That makes it even worse.

Their paths keep crossing,  ultimately leading to a final experiment which we have been prepped to dread from page one. When the story arc finally returns to a place of great import for an ending of total despair, echoing Shelley and Lovecraft but going further than any of them, an ending that makes that of Under the Dome feel brightly optimistic, we meet King at his very darkest. Crowning the patient, realistic setup with this outlandish horror works almost too well and Revival can really get under your skin. The only comfort seems to be that to King – judging by, for example, the almost provocatively mundane afterword – it’s ‘just’ another story. Not what he truly believes. I hope …