It by Stephen King: finished

Posted on August 28, 2014 by pagesofjulia

This review contains mild spoilers – like, about how characters feel about each other, and about who dies in the first 100 pages or so. No major plot-wrap-up spoilers. Medium spoilers.

Please recall my much earlier review of the first third or so of this book.

itMy It-reading friend got in touch to say that she’d been reading away while I hadn’t been. (I had been reading, just not this book.) Luckily I was just then headed off on vacation! so I sped through the last 800 or so pages, and upon my return, met her at the bar to discuss.

What happens in Stephen King’s It? I needed reminding as well; and I give Danielle credit for finding & recommending Constant Readers, a blog devoted to King’s work. Two friends discuss It in five parts, in banter-y dialog; it’s great fun, and they’re fairly expert about SK, unsurprisingly. Enjoyable and thought-provoking – check them out. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.)

I won’t spend too much more time on plot summary; It is fairly well established in our cultural consciousness and 1,000 people have written about this before so you can get the plot easily enough from Google if you need it. Kids become adults; good vs. evil; scary, exciting, outrageous.

A few notes from my impressions and/or my discussions with Danielle (and a little bit with my buddy Jack, who was unable to make the bar date)…

  • This book gripped me from the start, when briefly-likeable little Georgie gets it; I loved all the characters and rooted for them all the way through, in both their kid and adult form. Jack and Danielle both found them most relateable and real as kids, but I identified better with the adults versions (I don’t seem to remember my childhood as well as some people do) – although clearly, the kids were deeply likeable.
  • King’s worldbuilding skills are alive and well.
  • I adore how Stephen King always has a hero librarian in his books! (& Joe Hill too.)
  • His highly believable characters are one of his greatest feats: we agreed that this book is clearly character driven, although the plot was well done and powerful as well; and let’s be clear on King’s world-building prowess, yet again.
  • The ending was satisfying for me because it felt like the right, the realistic solution; but of course we’d always like to know more. In this case, I hunger for a little more epilogue for each of our survivors. I would love to see a follow-up book starring one of our grown-ups in his or her new life.
  • King continues to be outrageously self-referential; as I told Danielle (for whom It was her first King read! how exciting!), things will make more and more sense, the more you read him. The Dark Tower series ties in all over the place, and are you kidding me? Dick Hallorann from The Shining makes a not-insignificant appearance as well.
  • The dog dies! plus all the animal torture – gah!! Truly horrifying, King.
  • WHERE THE HECK DOES HE COME UP WITH THIS STUFF? Specifically, 27 years in between events? What is that about? The imagination astounds me.
  • I was rarely actually frightened. (There were a few nights when I read late into the dark hours in an unfamiliar bed…) I guess I didn’t buy into the supernatural threats quite enough to scare myself silly. But I marvel at the world created!

Rate ’em: how did we like the characters? Richie is annoying but also loveable; I think his role is to be annoying to his friends, less so to the reader. (To me at least.) Stan is hard to love. Maybe because he dies so early that we know not to invest in him? Eddie is also a little exasperating but I found him sympathetic as well. Despite these three being difficult to like, I ended up rooting for them all. When Eddie and Stan really stepped up to the plate and gave it their all, they came further, you know? For Bill and Ben, heroism seemed to come more naturally. (For all that Ben is meant to be the archetype of fat loser kid, he always had a courageous hero sitting very near the surface; he didn’t have to come as far to get there.) I loved Bev, Danielle didn’t; and while Mike was maybe a little boring, he was the rock, or the tie that bound them all together (not to mention being an uber-capable librarian, which is always worth points). And Bill? Interestingly, the Constant Readers did not appreciate Bill. And I can understand the ways in which they found him boring, but I loved him all the same. As far as his being a foil for Ben & Bev’s romance, I say, not his fault; there will always be that guy (or girl), and he (or she) doesn’t always have control over that role. Fair game. In the end, I loved all seven of our kids, more or less equally – with Stan a half-step below, for not sticking around long enough to earn more love.

Favorite quotations from Constant Readers:

  • “In the Gunslinger world, they’d be a ka-tet.” Yes.
  • “This book is full of childhood sweetnesses without every getting mawkish or saccharine, which is a fucking feat.”
  • “I know you hate the Turtle, but I really like the image/concept of this lumbering creature that created the universe by puking, this really reflexive, disgusting bodily function, and now it’s dead because it puked in its own shell. I like the idea of the creator of all things being sort of witless. Or at least clumsy. I really believe that, man, if Something Made Us All, it was definitely not on purpose. A puking Space Turtle fits my ideology very well.”

On that last point: I totally agree. The turtle-as-creation-myth resonates deeply with me, and crosses over not only from the Dark Tower series, but from various native cultures from around the world (see Turtle Island). I am carrying forward this idea of the turtle that vomited up our world, and didn’t much care about it thereafter, as my new philosophy of life and its origins. Thank you, Stephen King.

He’s done it again. It is the Constant Readers’ favorite SK, and I’m pretty sure it’s Jack’s as well. I’m not sure I’m prepared to say that, but it’s definitely a great example of what he does best.

Rating: 9 newspaper boats (shiver).

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Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Posted on July 3, 2014 by pagesofjulia

A detective novel by the horror master in which a mass murderer torments a retired cop who fights back.

mr. mercedes

Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes opens in a present-day depressed Midwestern metropolis, where retired detective Bill Hodges is haunted by the one who got away. It has been several years now, but he can still see the job fair, the long lines of unemployed people who’d waited overnight in the cold, the ghostly gray Mercedes accelerating through the crowd, the gristle and gore dripping from its fender as it drove off. Hodges is considering suicide when he receives a letter from someone claiming to be the Mercedes Killer.

Hodges is reinvigorated by a second chance at solving the cold case, with a few unlikely allies. The neighbor kid who mows Hodges’s lawn contributes computer skills and a surprisingly strong sounding board for new theories. The sister of the car’s original owner is both a delightful foil to the former cop’s depression and a potential love interest. Her niece brings the challenge of dealing with mental illness, but also a steely resolve, to this dubious crime-fighting team. While tracking Hodges’s efforts, Mr. Mercedes simultaneously follows the Mercedes Killer himself. He’s a loner who works two jobs, lives with his mother and attracts no attention, but harbors creepy inclinations worthy of Stephen King.

King’s fans will recognize his talents with suspense, finely drawn Americana and the horror of pure evil lurking in the everyday. His characters are as true-to-life and likeable as ever. As the improbable heroes and the Mercedes Killer rush toward a crashing finish, Mr. Mercedes is proof yet again that King can still terrify his readers without invoking the supernatural.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the June 3, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 8 ice creams.

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It by Stephen King: first third (or so)

Posted on May 21, 2014 by pagesofjulia

itI have inadvertently started a book club at the bar that I frequent. What can I say, it’s on the train line home from work, right at a station, and I love it.

I am trying to coordinate my reading of It with a certain bartender’s reading of It. We shall see how the pacing works out. But hey, it’s Stephen King! Who could resist? Happily, like my bartender/reading buddy Danielle, I have not seen the movie and had no cultural preconceptions about this book or story at all; I was vaguely aware that it was “the” scary story about the scary clown. And so we begin. I have paused at approximately 300 pages into approximately 1100 so that Danielle and I can talk about it.

My early impressions are that – naturally – this is a good, and scary, story. It opens with “Part 1: The Shadow Before.” In 1957, in the backwater town of Derry, Maine, a child is murdered during a flood, by a terrifying paranormal clown in a storm gutter. Then we flash forward to a hate crime in the same town at a festival in 1984, in which a gay man is killed. The clown finishes him off; but it was the local residents responsible in the first place. And in 1985, six individuals receive phone calls that frighten them badly and throw their established routines into upheaval: they are called back “home” to Derry.

Each of these vignettes is compelling. I was more disturbed by the hate crime than by the supernatural murder, probably because the hate crime is realistic, an example of something that really happens in our world. And I especially enjoyed meeting the six adults who take the six phone calls: each is a well developed, interesting character, living in a very real world, just briefly sketched. We see strong marriages – not without their troubles, but based upon real love; and we see damaged marriages and lives, whose problems also feel realistic. I think Stephen King has a gift for writing Real American Lives.

And then we begin “Part 2: June of 1958.” The child killed in the flood is still a recent memory; the town of Derry is concerned over the deaths of several more young people in that year, including one beaten to death by his step-father in a particularly gruesome scene involving a recoilless hammer (this tool was new to me, incidentally). We are working our way through the six adults who received the six phone calls, meeting them as Derry children, and friends. Also, we meet the man who makes the six phone calls, through a diary he keeps of the evils of Derry. He is, appropriately, a librarian and historian (King never fails to tip his hat to my fine profession. Thank you, sir). And it is here, almost through Part 2, that Danielle and I have stopped reading for now; so my synopsis will continue in a later post.

There have been memorable lines. I liked this one on the opening pages:

Water sprayed out from beneath his galoshes in muddy sheets. Their buckles made a jolly jingling as George Denbrough ran toward his strange death.

The juxtaposition of “jolly jingling” with the foreshadowing of a child’s “strange death” is very effective.

And Danielle pointed out the power of these lines, about a child making friends for the first time:

He liked the way his laughter sounded with theirs. It was a sound he had never heard before: not mingled laughter – he had heard that lots of times – but mingled laughter of which his own was a part.

Also very effective, a poignant way to indicate his profound loneliness.

There have been clever in-jokes for the Stephen King fan; he likes to reference his own work, and in one case, that of his son, novelist Joe Hill. I found references to the turtle (or the Turtle), which seems to be a King leitmotif, and the use of the phrase, being “on the beam” – both of which concepts figure in the Dark Tower series. And one kid is described as wearing a Judas Coyne t-shirt (see Heart-Shaped Box). I get a kick out of these self-referential grins.

There have been vocabulary lessons. I want to point out that although King has a reputation for being pulpy, a genre author, or less “serious,” he is well-written, even literary, and regularly sends me to the dictionary. For example, I had to look up “il mot juste,” “planchette,” “batrachian,” and “chitinous.”

And where are we headed with It? I remain in the dark about where the remaining 802 pages will take us; but it is clear that Derry, Maine is home to a great evil. Our librarian/historian friend has recorded that Bad Things were happening here from the beginning – about every 25-28 years all the way back in the town’s history, in fact, which suggests something generational going on, although I don’t have the answers yet. The clown is rather the embodiment of evil; Danielle points out that he is a shapeshifting clown, although I’m not sure yet that the Creature (big mean bird encountered by young Mike) is the same as the clown. I’m still very much in the dark so far, and that’s fine, because again, 802 pages to go!

This is a scary story, with evil lurking in unknown places and with unknown aims; but I’m not terrified of clowns just yet. Danielle and I also asked ourselves if this is the story that made clowns scary? But she thinks not: she thinks that King is tapping into a preexisting societal fear, although he can definitely be credited with confirming it! And I bet the movie was horrifying.

Stay tuned!

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Teaser Tuesdays: Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

Posted on May 6, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

mr. mercedes

A new Stephen King! HOORAY! I think it will be as excellent as I hope it will be.

Hodges eats this diet of full-color shit every weekday afternoon, sitting in the La-Z-Boy with his father’s gun – the one Dad carried as a beat cop – on the table beside him. He always picks it up a few times and looks into the barrel. Inspecting that round darkness.

He can really paint a scene in a few words, can’t he? I won’t say too much more; the book will be out in just a few weeks and I think I’ll be able to recommend it.

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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Song of Susannah by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Just to review the Dark Tower series:

The Gunslinger (I)

The Drawing of the Three (II)

The Waste Lands (III)

Wizard and Glass (IV)

The Wind Through the Keyhole, written last but fitting between books IV and V

Wolves of the Calla (V)

and here we are with book VI, Song of Susannah.

susannah

I’m sorry to say I have to agree with what Jeff Coleman said (in a comment, here), about the series beginning to fray in this book. Our beloved ka-tet, in which we, the readers, have invested so much care and worry, is beginning to come apart. The characters are now separated and working independently or in pairs, and I think both the storyline, and the emotional investment King can ask of us, suffer. In fact, I am going to compare this problem to a recent television event: I think watchers of The Walking Dead are frustrated by how everyone is split up. We still care enough to watch week to week (at least my household does!) but we’re a little unhappy with the producers for keeping us so much in the dark as to where everyone is. We don’t mind a little conflict, a little suspense and fear – in the case of the Dark Tower series and the zombie tv series, both, I think we’re here for the suspense and the fear; and no story is anything without conflict – but it’s getting a little harder to invest as we’re spread around so thinly.

Susannah/Mia is battling, basically, herself; she is by herself; and her survival is not assured. Eddie and Roland are off on their own worrying about the rose, and they have a bizarre adventure in which they meet Stephen King himself, on which more in a moment. Jake and Pere Callahan, and thank goodness Oy, are… still around, but I’m not sure what they contribute to this novel other than to still pull my dog-loving heartstrings (Stephen King KNOWS I won’t stop reading as long as Oy is around). I am sorry to say that this may be the first book in this series in which nothing happens.

Stephen King writing about people who are in a book that Stephen King wrote, and who then go off to find & meet Stephen King, so as to convince him to write about them – this is interesting. It’s mind-bending, intriguing, very meta, and perhaps a little silly; I’m not sure how egomaniacal he’s being here, but I think I dig it. I like a good mind-bender. Again, though, I’m not sure what it contributes to the arc of the plot of this series; I am impatient for our characters to get together again; I’m worried about them, but not in a plot-progress kind of way. Hurry up and give us more action, King.

There is also a quick reference – so quick you could almost miss it, except that it is SHOCKING and I gasped on the train and people looked at me – that distressed me. I’ll write it here in white text, and you can highlight to read it if you’re unafraid of spoilers. There is a line that says something like “Eddie never got a chance to, because by then he and Roland would be separated by death.” What a heck of a thing to foreshadow, Stephen King. I am upset.

This penultimate book in the series leaves me anxious for the next one – I’m anxious for our splintered ka-tet, and also anxious that the last book will be a good one. It’s certainly a fat one; I couldn’t find it on audio, so I’ll have to wait until I find the print-reading time to slot in these 1,000 pages. Dear, dear.

Rating: 5 turtles.

(but only because it’s part of this series.)

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Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on February 17, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Just to review the Dark Tower series:

The Gunslinger (I)

The Drawing of the Three (II)

The Waste Lands (III)

Wizard and Glass (IV)

The Wind Through the Keyhole, written last but fitting between books IV and V.

and here we are with V: Wolves of the Calla.

wolvesThis is a very long one. My library copy of the audio came on 22 CD’s. Off the top of my head, I can only remember Anna Karenina being longer; but where that was a painful experience for me (sorry, Tolstoy fans), this was pleasurable.

The action of Roland’s ka-tet of 5 – Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy – takes up very little geographical space, unlike most of the previous volumes. They leave Topeka and the Wizard of Oz world, and encounter an envoy from a local town, Calla Bryn Sturgis. The locals are tormented by the Wolves from Thunderclap, the neighboring badlands: these “wolves” come about once a generation to the Calla, where a single-born child (or “singleton”) is a rarity. Most children are born in twins, and the wolves come to take own of each set away with them; when they are sent back to their families shortly after, they grow into severely mentally handicapped giants who live short, painful lives. The folken of the Calla have heard that there are gunslingers in the area, and they are struggling to decide whether to ask the gunslingers’ aid in defending their town against the coming wolves – or letting them take half the town’s children, as always.

Among them, to the great surprise of Eddie, Susannah and Jake – all originally from New York City, although of three different whens – is Father Callahan, also transplant from their world, and with terrible stories to tell about the vampires he had hunted in his former life, before coming to the Calla and settling among the people of Roland’s world. He will be an important player, among other reasons, because he is in possession of another piece of the wizard’s glass: the big bad one, Black 13. As he tells his strange life story, and the gunslingers interview the townspeople in preparation to fight against the wolves, Roland worries about this delay of their greater mission, the quest for the Dark Tower. He has a bad feeling about what will befall them here; but a gunslinger asked for his aid cannot demur.

To complicate things further, each of the ka-tet becomes aware on his or her own schedule of another terrifying fact: Susannah is pregnant, or at least one of the women living inside her body is – a result of the fighting-sex she had with a demon in the second drawing of Jake, in The Waste Lands. We recall that when we first met the woman who is now Susannah Dean, wife of Eddie, she was Odetta Holmes – and also Detta Walker. This schizophrenic (or possessed?) double became one, healthier, stronger woman in Susannah; but now she has a new inhabitant, the one called Mia, who is mother to a demon child that threatens Susannah’s life. (Whew. Got that straight?) It is a weakening of the ka-tet that each of them learns this fact separately and is reluctant to share it with the others. Also, Detta appears to be making a comeback within the split body of Susannah Dean. We still haven’t entirely categorized her as being mentally ill, or a victim of black magic… but considering the setting for this fantasy series, I think it’s the latter.

And in a final plotline and complication: the rose in the vacant lot in New York is confirmed as being an important part of the quest as well, being firmly linked to the Dark Tower itself. The ka-tet is now concerned with getting back and forth to New York to buy the lot and protect the rose as well.

As this lengthy (but not wearying) epic plays out, Roland and the reader begin to understand that beating the wolves, seeing Susannah safely through Mia’s pregnancy, protecting the rose, and handling the awful power of Black 13 are all related to the great mission of this series: achieving the Dark Tower. At the end of the story, the wolves are vanquished (at least for now), but Susannah/Mia is off on her own; Eddie is distraught, the ka-tet is splintering, and its efforts are divided between multiple aims.

My praise of the series continues; the strengths of one are the strengths of all. I’m still deeply invested in our ka-tet (and OH, when Oy made his little speech and bow! he still might be my favorite) and in their eventual fate; and I continue to find the shorter-lived characters of each book – in this case, the Calla-folken – worthwhile investments, too. I marvel at the mind of Stephen King that can create such large and involved worlds with all their interconnections. And what a tricky one he is! For Father Callahan comes from another of his novels, Salem’s Lot – one I’ve not read, so I had to have the joke spelled out for me, but it tickled me nonetheless; I can only imagine for the folks who had read it, what a great joke and mindbender this was.

I am now heading into book VI, Song of Susannah. I was on a road trip when the one ended, and just started right up into the next without pause. As we begin this next installment, the integrity of our little group is highly questionable, and I’m anxious for them. Stay tuned!

Rating: 7 sharpened dishes.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

Posted on February 11, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

wolves

Hooray for Stephen King as usual! This is a long one, which I appreciate, as I get to lose myself in the Outworld of this novel, the fifth in the Dark Tower series.

For our teaser today: I was struck by these lines.

“But if you get her killed, Roland.. you’ll take my curse with her when you leave the calla, if you do, no matter how many children you save.”

Roland, who had been cursed before, nodded.

Doesn’t bode particularly well, does it?

What are you reading this week?

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book beginnings on Friday: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King

Posted on January 31, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Hooray! The next Dark Tower novel! This is number 5.

wolves

I am passing over the rather lengthy introductory bit entitled “the final argument,” in which we are reviewed on the first four books of the series. I found this part mildly entertaining but could have done without it, considering how recently I’ve been speeding through the series; I think it’s extremely good to have, though, for readers beginning with this book or picking up after a long break. I do not think it suits today’s book beginnings theme, however.

So we start here with the prologue.

Tian was blessed (though few farmers would have used such a word) with three patches: River Field, where his family had grown rice since time out of mind; Roadside Field, where ka-Jaffords had grown sharproot, pumpkin, and corn for those same long years and generations; and Son of a Bitch, a thankless tract which mostly grew rocks, blisters, and busted hopes.

That makes for a fine echo of the classic Western thread that runs through these books. I am very glad to be back in the hands of Roland Deschain today.

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Wizard and Glass by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on January 15, 2014 by pagesofjulia

wizard and glassHow to continue to describe the outrageously imaginative, engrossing masterpiece that is Stephen King’s Dark Tower series? Oh my word.

Wizard and Glass is book 4 and, I think, my favorite so far. We met the gunslinger in book 1; met his three compatriots in book 2; and were reunited with the boy Jake in book 3. As this next installment opens, the ka-tet of Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy find themselves in Kansas; but it is a strange, other-worldly Kansas, perhaps parallel to the one we recognize. Along the road, the group stops for the night and Roland tells a story. This telling will fill the vast bulk of the book, so that as in The Wind Through the Keyhole, it’s a story within a story, with the inner one taking top billing.

Roland’s tale is that of his first love, his first adventure and battles as a gunslinger, and the genesis of his quest for the Dark Tower, which is by this point a quest willingly shared by his companions. It’s a great story, what King does best.

Roland begins by referring to the way he won his guns, and his right to be a gunslinger, in a fight against his teacher, Cort. Roland was 14, and his father was angry, and also worried, and sent Roland away along with his two best friends, Cuthbert and Alain. They travel to the back-country town of Hambry, in the barony of Mejis, where they are given a deceptively simple task that immediately complicates. Roland encounters a young woman named Susan and falls in love; their love is (naturally) thwarted by her unwilling role in the intrigue in which Mejis is entwined. Roland, Cuthbert and Alain, assisted by Susan and a deeply likeable local named Sheemie, will end up doing battle with the forces of “the good man” (who is of course bad) in this outer barony; and Roland’s love is doomed.

This story is endlessly moving, and engrossingly suspenseful. There is something sweepingly large and yet entirely believable about the teenage love story of Roland and Susan; and Cuthbert and Alain, who until now have been referred to only obliquely, become fully-developed great friends to the reader as well as to Roland. The reader is every bit as enthralled as Roland’s contemporary ka-tet (Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy) are; and I loved the slight jolt King inserts when Eddie breaks in to ask how Roland could know the story from all angles: what Susan thought, what the witch did when she was alone… this reminds us just when we’re starting to lose ourselves in Roland’s tale, that we’re actually still on the side of the road in Kansas with the new ka-tet, at the same time.

When Roland finishes talking, the five companions continue on the road towards… the emerald city. Genres, and worlds, mash up again when they come to the emerald castle and encounter the Wizard (of Oz?) – he of the book’s title, and we’ll also see the glass for the first time (which played such a role in Roland’s story). At the finish of the book, relatively little has happened to our main characters; they return to following the path of the Beam in search of the Dark Tower. But the wizard does entreat them to abandon their quest, and each in turn gets to articulate that he or she is by Roland’s side by choice now and from now on. The saga continues.

I am reeling; I never wanted this book to end; I reveled in it and rather tore at my hair when I realized I’m still wait-listed at my local library for the next in the series. (The horror!) My former policy of reading series willy-nilly with no respect for their order is gone; I am a purist. Stephen King has reformed me.

Rating: 9 pulses of pink.

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Atwood on King

Posted on December 19, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Thank you Mom, again, for passing this on: a review of Stephen King’s latest, Doctor Sleep, by Margaret Atwood of all people. In other words, good writing about good writing! (I will refrain from the temptation to call this a guest post. Margaret Atwood, unfortunately, does not write for me. At least not specifically.)

From the New York Times Magazine: Shine On.

I think you’ll find that she and I draw a few conclusions in common (ahem, thank you), although she does it better. I especially like her assertion that King is proper, respectable literature – something I have suspected, increasingly, for some time. (I think I said it here.)

Well done, Atwood; thanks, Mom; the rest of you, go read this review and then the book in question.

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