Just a weak and mean little man.Īnd Sadie Dunhill is easily one of the best female characters King has ever written - and that's saying something, considering Susannah Dean, Annie Wilkes, Beverly Marsh, Frannie Goldsmith, Wendy Torrance and Mother Abigail all sprung from his imagination like Venus from the clamshell. Oswald doesn't feel like a sinister mastermind but a lucky blemish - an unhappy and poisonous man who brought down a nation's leader through a perfect confluence of events. I'm fascinated by the way this shadowy figure from our history is actualized on the page here. I've heard from a few readers that the hundred or so pages Jake spends spying on the Oswalds feels like tortuous wheel-spinning, but I never felt like that. I miss them.Īnd he's managed to make Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife Marina feel like more than ominous names echoing from a newsreel. I love them, I fear for them, I want the best for them. Miz Mimi, Deke Simmons, Harry Dunning, Miz Ellie - I feel as if I know these people. He makes mistakes and falls in love and shows courage, and in between all of that he lives and breathes and moves amidst an endless number of mundanities just like the rest of us. Okay, Jake could probably be substituted for any number of writers/teachers/everymen in King's novels, but he still feels real.
I've always felt - and argued passionately against dissenters - that King's characters make up the strongest part of his writing, and they're never stronger than in 11/22/63. They just feel like men and women and kids - like people, in other words. The citizens of Jodie, Texas, and Lisbon Falls, Maine, have their own rhythms and references here, but they never feel like caricatures. I've never minded the heavy-handed regional dialogue in King's previous works, but the relative absence is noticeable in 11/22/63, and it leaves the book with a comfy naturalism that strengthens and refines his writing. There's an ease to the writing in 11/22/63. So to prefer one of King's least horrific novels - to actually claim it as his best - feels a bit like treason to me. I love horror I've long maintained that horror is responsible for some of the most brilliant and poignant art ever made. I've read damn near everything he's ever written - I'm short a Bachman book or two, I'm still missing a couple of his short story compilations and I haven't gotten around to Doctor Sleep just yet, but it's safe to say that I'm coming from a place of discernment here.Īnd I'll be honest: I don't actually want to feel this way. I've had a few weeks to ruminate on the conclusion of Stephen King's time travel/JFK assassination novel 11/22/63, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion: King has written no finer novel in his long and prolific career.
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