11/22/63
Stephen King
849 pages, read it
in Hardback
July was for my
mother, as I finished another reference from her prior to picking this up, and
this tomb was suggested by her last November or so. She enjoyed it so much that it ended up in my
Holiday pull. I never complain when I
receive a book, especially not a good one.
As is the way, it ended up in my stack until I could appropriate it into
the 'currently reading' bracket. That
came and passed and it was devoured in turn.
Stephen King of
course has a long litany of books, good books, scary books, and even a few
books on how to write books, books. The
guy cranks out work, and most would argue very quality work. So good in fact that Mr. King has received
the Bram Stroker Award, World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Society, the
Nebula Award, a Medal for Distinguished Contribution of American Letters, and
the World fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
Also a whole list of other awards.
Sadly, Mr. King was struck by a car in 1999 and all writing halted for
some time while he struggled with his injuries and thoughts of retirement. Well, lucky for us fans, King decided not to
retire and instead begun writing again.
This novel being one such novel dubbed 'post-accident'.
Jake Epping is from
Maine (of course) and he lives a pretty standard life, recently divorced, and
is a teacher. On the side Jake teaches a
night time GED class in which he encounters an essay from one of his students,
a janitor at the school, and despite being grammatically incorrect, the essay
is so moving that Jake passes him anyways.
In celebration Jake takes the student to dinner at his favorite diner
that most of the town ignores for fear of what the low cost means for the
contents of the meat. The diners owner
is a man named Al that Jake only knows from the diner and when all eerily
summons him one night to the diner Jake is intrigued and shows up only to find
Al on death's doorstep. As Al's last
wish he asks Jake into the back of the diner to show him something fantastic,
mysterious, and mind blowing. Not
wanting to disappoint Al's dying wish, Jake discovers the rabbit hole and is
invariably introduced to a life and world changing event.
As I am sure you can
tell from the title and cover of the book, Jake is delivered to a point in time
before the assassination of the 35th president, John F. Kennedy with the
responsibility and mission to avert the national disaster if able. As if it wasn’t complicated enough the past
is obdurate and fights change based with fervor equal to the gravity of the
change being attempted.
Overall the book was
fantastic and I really enjoyed it but at times, on par with all of King's work,
can be overly wordy and redundant but there are some nice prizes in this
piece. Furthermore, it's obvious that
King did his homework and this particular book also doubles as a time piece
stitched together with what the early sixties felt, smelled, sounded, and what
the overall atmosphere of the period was like.
All of which are really impressive when you read it.
Also, King wrote an
alternative ending which was posted to his blog, I think, and is worth
finding. Keep your eye out, because if
you are familiar with some of King's other more famous works there are some
nice throwbacks and references.
Beware of the Jimla
and good luck with this monster of a book!
No comments:
Post a Comment