A Long, Strange Book Review: 11/22/63

I've never been much of a Stephen King reader. When I read "The Shining" in college, I couldn't sleep for a week. As an insomniac, I didn't need any more help staying awake. But his last book "Under The Dome," intrigued me and I really enjoyed it, so I decided to try his latest effort, "11/22/63."

The book follows the adventures of a guy from 2011 who goes back in time to try and stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing JFK.

King starts the book off strong, and for the first few hundred pages of this 800-plus page novel, it's a compelling story. Before stopping the assassination, main character Jake Epping sets out to fix some other injustices. The parts of the book dealing with completely fictional characters flows amazingly well and I had trouble putting the book down.

The problem arises when Epping begins to focus on Oswald. The flow grinds to a halt with agonizing minutia, meant to establish Oswald as the sole shooter of Kennedy and giving the protagonist his reasoning to go after him. Despite a subplot involving a love interest, the story loses its mojo when the setting changes to Texas and just doesn't manage to find its way again.

That is even more evident in the ending, which feels tacked on and placed only to give a more King-like horror feel to the story.

The book could have lost about 200 pages and a couple subplots and it probably would have been a great overall read. As it stands, though, I wouldn't recommend it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Been a While

Image
Back in college, I got hooked on a delivery place for (usually) late-night post-drinking munchies. D.P. Dough made several different kinds of calzones. My favorite was the Buffalo Zone (later renamed the Buff Zone, for reasons beyond my understanding). It was, unsurprisingly, a calzone stuffed with buffalo chicken. I ordered that much more often than I care to remember. Now, I'm nowhere near a D.P. Dough, and I've yet to find a place that sells a calzone that matches it. One of the upsides of cooking for yourself is you can make something just the way you want it. Back when we were still in Chicago, that's exactly what we did.  Usually, Stacey takes point on the calzones. But Stacey went back to Liverpool today, so I'm left on my own. Helpfully, Stacey left some dough behind from the pumpkin pizza she made last week, so I had all I needed to make a calzone on my own.  Wow, OK, this picture's not as good as I hoped. In front is a ricotta mixture, wi
Read more

Redistricting Battle

My story last week didn't make the paper's website, so I'm posting it here.  Vigilance Called For In Redistricting Battle Panelists at a forum on redistricting Tuesday night, Feb. 21, urged a largely Hispanic crowd in Elmhurst to call on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to veto the proposal as it currently stands.             “The Governor made a campaign promise, if the lines weren’t suitable, he would veto the lines,” Kenneth D. Cohen, regional director of the NAACP NYC Metro Council, said. “If we allow what has been proposed to happen, you won’t be represented fairly.”             The forum, held at the Make The Road New York offices at 92-10 Roosevelt Ave. , was meant to be an educational tool on the redistricting process. It quickly became an indictment of the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment – LATFOR – the committee charged with redrawing district lines based on the 2010 Census.             “The idea of independence really is nowhere
Read more

Torture

It's been a long time since I've written anything other than a cover letter. Frankly, while I try to change things up every now and then, there's very little creativity that goes into writing one of those things. "Dear Sir or Madam, as the case may be, I'm awesome. Hire me. I know you won't, it's OK. But I'm trying to pretend that all hope is not lost here, just to save some face. Thanks for pretending to take the time to review stuff, Me." Hmmm. I may use that next time I send something out. Today, I shall try to write, because it's Wednesday and why not? Because I enjoy torturing myself, I will post what I write right here. In fact, I'll just write here. Maybe. It sure beats applying for jobs, but it's not as much fun as playing video games, so I'll do some of that, too. I'm babbling. Good bye.
Read more