Leaving Viking for the storied literary patina of Scribner, current or not, King seemingly strives on the page for a less vulgar gloss. And he eases from horror into romantic suspense, while adding dollops of the supernatural. The probable model: structural echoes of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca do sound forth, although King never writes one paragraph herein to match du Maurier’s opening moonscapes of Manderley. What comes through nevertheless is a strong pull to upgrade his style and storytelling in this his 50th year. Yes, he actually does write better if with less energy and power than in Desperation (1996). In fact, attacking the race problem in lily-white Maine, he even assumes an almost Dreiserian seriousness in his final paragraphs. Well, the story: romantic-suspense novelist Michael Noonan, who summers in Castle Rock on Dark Score Lake, falls into a four-year writer’s block when his wife Johanna dies of a brain blowout. Now 40 and childless, Mike has salted away four extra novel manuscripts in his safe-deposit box, one of them 11 years old (shades of Richard Bachman!), and keeps up a pretense of productivity by publishing a “new” novel each year. Meanwhile, he finds himself falling for Mattie Devore, a widowed mother half his age. Mattie’s late husband is the son of still-thriving half-billionaire computer king Max Devore, 85 years old and monstrous, who plans to gain possession of Mattie’s three-year-old daughter, the banally drawn Kyra. Mike’s first big question: Did Johanna cuckold him during his long hours writing? If so, will her character reverse our understanding of her, as does Rebecca de Winter’s? And how can he help Mattie fight off Max and keep Kyra? The supernatural elements, largely reserved for the interracial climax, are Standard King but fairly mild. Philosophically limited but a promising artistic shift for a writer who tried something like this with 1995’s failure, Rose Madder.
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-85350-7
Page Count: 529
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
A pleasing book for those who like to scare themselves silly, one to read with the lights on and the door bolted.
Two decades after his debut novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), Chbosky returns with a creepy horror yarn that would do Stephen King proud.
“Mom? Will he find us?” So asks young Christopher of his mother, Kate, who has spirited him away from her abusive mate and found a tiny town in Pennsylvania in which to hide out. Naturally, her secret is not safe—but it’s small potatoes compared to what Christopher begins to detect as he settles in to a new life and a new school. His friends, like him, are casualties, and that’s just fine for the malevolent forces that await out in the woods and even in the sky, the latter the place where Christopher comes into contact with a smiling, talking cloud that lures him off into the ever dark woods. “That’s when he heard a little kid crying,“ writes Chbosky, and that’s just about the time the reader will want to check to be sure that no one is hiding behind the chair—or worse, and about the scariest trope of all, which Chbosky naturally puts to work, under the bed. Christopher disappears only to turn up a little less than a week later, decidedly transformed. But then, so’s everyone in Mill Grove, including his elementary school teacher, who harbors an ominous thought: “Christopher was such a nice little boy. It was too bad that he was going to die now.” As things begin to go truly haywire, Chbosky’s prose begins to break down into fragments and odd punctuation and spelling, suggesting that someone other than the author is in control of the fraught world he’s depicting. One wonders why Kate doesn’t just fire up the station wagon and head down the Pennsylvania Turnpike rather than face things like a “hissing lady” and a townsman who has suddenly begun to sport daggerlike teeth, but that’s the nature of a good scary story—and this one is excellent.
A pleasing book for those who like to scare themselves silly, one to read with the lights on and the door bolted.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-3133-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A waterlogged ghost tale.
In the pseudonymous Carson’s debut, something uncanny has awakened in the swelling depths of upstate New York’s Chilewaukee Reservoir, aka “The Chill.”
It’s been nearly 80 years since the town of Galesburg was flooded to build the Chilewaukee, and the town didn’t go easy. A small contingent of people rebelled, leading to shocking acts of violence. Since then, an otherworldly evil has been waiting for the right time to take revenge against those responsible for destroying the town, which, on a clear day, can still be glimpsed just under the surface of the Chill. Opportunity presents itself in the form of Mick Fleming, chief engineer with the state’s division of dam safety, whose grandfather designed the dam. During an inspection, Mick’s concerns for the safety and integrity of the Chill—especially in light of recent unrelenting rain—are eclipsed by the appearance of a strange photographer who looks like a figure out of time, and Mick soon finds himself not quite in his right mind. Meanwhile, Gillian Mathers, an officer with the Department of Environmental Protection Police who has old familial ties to Galesburg, is sucked in when she responds to a report of an inexplicable murder at the dam that turns out to be something far stranger. Gillian, Mick, and others are soon drawn in by an insidious force, and inevitably, the sins of the past tragically collide with the present. The premise brims with creepy potential, and readers will learn more than they ever thought they wanted to know about dams and the challenges of harnessing a relentless force of nature that is often taken for granted. However, the meandering plot and muddled mythology eventually give way to scenes from a disaster film, with a thinly fleshed-out cast failing to provide the necessary emotional heft.
A waterlogged ghost tale.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-0459-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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