It’s easy to get lost in a good book. Not every book has this power but some stories can pull you in like the undertow and as long as the book continues, your consciousness is split between your familiar world and the narrative of the story, where you live fully and completely in its pages. I love getting sucked into a story but, between you and me, it’s painful when it happens because I always finish these books with a sense of bereavement. The consciousness I’ve been tuned into since the early pages slips away with the ending and leaves me back in this existence, a bit breathless and diminished by the loss. It takes a while to get used to this life again. So, be warned if you pick up a copy of Duma Key: despite the loss, evil and horror in its pages, you won’t want this story to end. It’s the confession of Edgar Freemantle, a man learning some Americans have more than one act in their lives. The first act of his ended when a work accident stole his arm, the ability to communicate and, in the end, his marriage. Stuck and unhappy, Edgar decides to…
Yes, it’s hearts and flowers day, the annual celebration of the “people in pairs” that make up a big segment of our civilization. Hey, I’m all for marriage. A good marriage becomes the third part of a romantic relationship and it nurtures the people in it as well as those around it. It brings out the best in the partners. But people are limited and, despite our prayers and best wishes, not every romance becomes a good marriage. Listen, if you go by Stephen King’s volume of that name, you may rethink Valentine’s Day altogether. If a good marriage is the base of the best of all worlds, you’ll find nothing but hell in the bad. The title tale is one of King’s famous “what if” thoughts that popped up during an article on BTK. You remember him? I do. I, and later my mother, lived in Wichita during the years that serial killer was free. His actions were terrible and one of the bad parts when they caught him was he looked so ordinary, which is part of King’s point. If monsters look and talk and dress pretty much like everyone else, how can the sane person pick one…
I came late to the Stephen King party. His books first hit the national consciousness when I was a teenager and at the time, I decided they were bad. Not because of the subject matter; I’ve been terrifying myself with stories since I first picked up a book. No those early stories were poorly written, in my opinion, fiction man-handled onto a page by someone without subtly or regard for language. Except for the film adaptations, I ignored the man’s output until 1999 (which is a separate tale in itself) when I found the author everyone else had been yakking about for decades. I am sure some of Mr. King’s writing skill improved through sheer practice and I hope he’s had help from the best editors in the business but I’d guess the single greatest factor that improved the man’s work is his sobriety. His later books have a focus that was missing in his earlier work.. Nothing shows the change more than comparing the two stories of Danny Torrence: The Shining and Doctor Sleep. The Shining is, of course, the account of the Torrence family’s tragic adventures in the Overlook Hotel. Jack Torrence tries to turn his life around…