Stephen King is definitely my favorite writer of all time. JoAnne knows I'm a SK fanatic so whenever she wants a book review of a King book, she remembers to always call her weird friend Sharon! Needless to say, when ask to give a SK review, I immediately am put on the defensive and feel the need to convince all of you just how great a writer I think King is. I think many readers dismiss him as just some prolific writer of horror stories who must lead a pretty weird life in order to even imagine the tales he comes up with about vampires, possessed cars, dogs, & pet semetaries. I honestly think history will show that Stephen King besides being one of the most prolific writers of our time was also one of the best. As more people read especially his later books they will see how his writing has progressed into works with appeal and substance. BOB is just this kind of book. Keep in mind that it's just Harry Potter in adult form.
I would like to give you a little history of Stephen King first. I belong to three SK lists on the Net and so each day am getting lots of SK imput., (my kids call me a real freak) Also after I became interested in SK, I began to collect first edition SK hardbacks. It might be interesting to note that autographed first editions of CARRIE & SALEM'S LOT are going for about $800-1,000 nowadays - naturally I don't have either of these. I've even done the "groupie" thing & sent in and gotten two of my books autographed. (Tell the autograph story.)
Perhaps some of you have seen the interviews with Stephen King since his recent accident, if so I think you probably could see that this is a relatively "normal" man with just a very vivid imagination. He has been married to Tabitha King, also a novelist, for 28 years. They have three children, Naomi, Joe and Owen Philip, and a new grandchild. Tabby, as Stephen calls her, seems very warm and supportive, but also very no-nonsense, a fact that King welcomes and credits for helping him avoid the pitfalls of celebrity. His children are no more overwhelmed by their father's fame than their mother is: "When I'm about to go out on a publicity tour for one of the books, Owen just says, "Oh, Daddy's going out to be Stephen King again." King was born in Portland, Maine, USA in 1947. He was educated at the University of Maine and has lived most of his adult life in Maine - in the Portland area or where he presently lives in Bangor, Maine. He plays on a local softball team, goes bowling, and contributes his time and money to the local library and other community efforts. In a recent interview I heard him list his priorities and they were: #1, husband, #2 father (earlier in his life this one would have been first), #3 Community (participating in, knew these people all his life, they were his friends & neighbors, he knew how they thought, talked & this was where he belonged) then he went on to say that life, friends, & love were so important that many would be amazed that as important as writing was to him it came way down on the list.
He has faced demons in his life and, therefore, we can really believe he knows when we read in his novels about abuse, alcoholism, & drug addiction. He seems to have a great insight into the female psyche and many of his novels (Misery, Delores Claiborne, Gerald's Game)have female heroines. This may be due to the fact that his father deserted his mother and he was very close to her and perhaps could relate to her position in life. He says of himself that he is a very addictive person. He feels that critics 25 years ago at the beginning of his writing dismissed him as a "hack", then somewhere around the middle thought of him as "probably a hack", and now they're just not sure, but think he's around to stay. He refers to himself as a "Big Mac and fries". A close friend feels like this is being very humble and that history will prove him more than that.
Since his first published book in 1974, Stephen King has written 49 novels. Of those, 25 have been made into movies with 9 more being made into TV mini-series. There have been several short stories published in various magazines in addition to his collection of works. 6 of these novels were written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. Like Alfred Hitchcock he has appeared in several of his movies with a bit part and it’s always interesting to see whether he’ll pop up as a truck driver, minister, cemetery caretaker, or hoagie man! He has produced and/or directed several of his movies when he wasn't satisfied with the first version. The best example of this was THE SHINING. The first movie with Jack Nicolson was just not quite right. It was good, but all of us SK fans just didn't feel quite right about it - neither did Mr. King. So many years later he went back to Estes Park, Colorado, to the Stanley Hotel where he originally got the idea for his novel and to the joy of his fans made a mini series which truly was THE SHINING. (Note the sheets on table and SK Encyclopedia) He has been very innovative and compared in this way to Dickens. Examples: Green Mile as a serial, The Storm of the Century as screenplay and on TV first before the book, Blood and Smoke recently as a book tape. He reads many of his books for book tapes as he does in BOB. (I always like this because I feel like I'm getting the true flavor of what the author wants!)
SK does have macular degeneration and this is unusual for a man of his age. He has always had severe myopia and faces the future as a blind man, but in his interview he mentioned that if Christopher Reeves can face what he has surely he can face blindness.
After his recent accident there was much hype about him losing the ability to write and my lists were going crazy with the news. This is untrue. He was hurt very badly and almost died. He is facing a year of intense physical therapy. He mentioned that he was having trouble getting back to writing and that was blown out of proportion. Katie Couric ask him if this experience would go into a book sometime in the future. His response was, "Eventually everything goes into a book."
Sometimes things happen in response to one of his books. After he wrote Misery a deranged fan broke into his house claiming that he was the true author of Misery, Carrie etc and had a bomb and was going to blow them up…..Then a student held his teacher hostage and said he'd gotten the idea from SK's book RAGE. SK promptly took it off the market and it is no longer available.
Many of his books have taken place in make-believe Maine towns. Here is a picture of what is called The Maine (according to Stephen King). Now many of the names would be much different than if you looked at a true map of Maine. You will find on this map the town of Little Tall Island where Dolores Claiborne resides and Castle Rock, the home of Cujo, the boys in "Stand by Me", and Johnny Smith in Dead Zone. You will find Derry, Mt. Desert Island, and St. Stephen. When you find this map on the Internet you have only to click on a spot on the may to know exactly what happened where and to whom.
He has chosen other areas for his novels. As I mentioned The Shining takes place in Colorado also there's Las Vegas, the South and even Kansas. Some of The Stand and Dark Tower feature our own Land of Oz. He describes Topeka in much detail - Gage Park, the little train, the interstate, and many Topeka streets.
However, as I mentioned basically he likes to have his books based in the area he knows best - Maine. This is the case for BOB. It takes place at Dark Score Lake in the TR-90. TR is a Maine zoning code for an unincorporated residential area. The area where most of the novel's action takes place is not a town, per se, but just a loose assemblage of houses, shops and summer homes. The locals refer to it by its zoning designation: TR-90.
Before telling you about BOB, I would like to read SK's letter to his readers about the book: Dear Readers,……
Many think that BOB is the most gripping and unforgettable novel SK has written to date. One critic says, "As shocking as Carrie, as mysterious and menacing as The Shining, as funny and honest about writers as Misery, as evocative of place as his record-setting bestseller The Green Mile, this is a horror novel steeped in all the finest qualities of our favorite SK stories. And yet it is also a bold step beyond, toward a more mature vision of marriage, sex, loss, family and, especially, evil." BOB is a story of grief and a lost love's enduring bonds, of a new love haunted by the secrets of the past, and of an innocent child caught in a terrible crossfire. Let's hear a little of the beginning….(Tape 1A/Pg 1-"On a very hot day…yep or nope.")
Before BOB came out I heard SK interviewed and he mentioned the fact that the main character's wife died on the first page, but when had that ever stopped him from presenting her as one of the main characters of the book. That is definitely true. Jo plays as much a part in this book as if she had been living.
The narrator of the book is Mike Noonan. Mike is a best selling writer of romantic thrillers. He is forty years old and is unable to stop grieving over his wife even after four years. He can no longer bear to face the blank screen of his word processor. He had several manuscripts already written and he gives these to his agent and publisher without telling them that he is facing severe writer's block. His nights are plagued by vivid nightmares. Many of these nightmares involve Jo and their summerhouse by the lake, known as Sara Laughs. So he decides to return to Sara Laughs. He finds his beloved Yankee town familiar on its surface, (He knows many of the people - Bill Dean, Brenda Maserve, Rogette Whitmore) but much has changed underneath. It has a dark side! He has had dreams about the house and thinks he has dreamed or imagined sunflowers by the drive that aren't there now, a child's cry in the night, Bunter (the moose who is hanging on the wall) whose bell sometimes rings when no one is there to ring it, and then the refrigerator magnets. These look like normal frig magnets, but aren't like any frig magnets I've ever seen. (Play 4Bmiddle/Pg133
(…barbecue going out on the deck) "I reached for….I didn't pick them up.")Mike discovers that his little community it held in the grip of Max Devore, a powerful millionaire who twists the very fabric of the community for his purposes. He is obsessed with taking away his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, from her widowed young mother, Mattie. Mike is drawn into this struggle. He meets Kyra as he's driving home..little 3 yr old Kyra is walking down the middle of the highway following the middle yellow stripe thinking this will lead her to the beach. Naturally Mattie comes along frantically searching for her little girl. He's amazed to find out Kyra's name as Jo & he were going to name their first little girl Kia. Many of his friends and neighbors advise him to stay away from Kyra and Mattie and, of course, at first he thinks that is just what he will do. But there seem to forces beyond his control. (Play 5B1/4from beg./Pg163
(grow up in California) "I walked back & forth…I decided I would at least try.")As Mike is drawn into their struggle he falls in love with Mattie and comes toalso love & adore Kyra. But he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. He has to decode the warnings that only he and the Kyra are receiving - and from ghosts many times via the frig magnets. (He got Kyra her own set of refrigerator magnets and her magnets also seem to act like a Queji board. She calls hers "fridgeafator people" and thinks that she's getting mail from the people in the refrigerator.) He finds that he isn't precisely alone at Sara Laughs. Jo's spirit may well be haunting the place, but so, apparently, is something older and less definable - one that seems to have a dark side with dark purposes. (Play 10Bbeg/Pg329
(Kickin I said) "I went to the kitchen…What else was sharing my house with me?")Mike discovers that over a century ago, a group of local men murdered a black blues singer and her family. This blues singer was in fact Sara Tidwell, the very Sara who Jo and Mike had named the house after. They had heard her singing and they thought her voice always seemed to be laughing and, therefore, they named their house Sara Laughs. But Sara doesn't seem to be laughing any longer. She is angry and she is determined to make her killers' heirs pay the price. Let's hear Sara Tidwell.(Play 6B almost to end/Pg211
(ball me Baby, yeah) "The basses…to end of Sara's singing.)Mike takes a spooky trip back in time to a county fair and is allowed to see exactly what happened. He does research and finds that a disturbing number of children have died under puzzling circumstances over the last century. He begins to realize that these children are heirs of Sara's killers and that each generation has been paying for Sara's death. Who is next? Mike is afraid to find the answer, but feels he has to in order to save Mattie and Kyra. He is threatened and nearly killed…then there seems to be hope and a happy ending for all.
Let me tell you, I listened to the book tape. It is 16 tapes long with 21 hours of listening pleasure. The book is 529 pages with I don't know how many hours of reading, but plenty. At tape 9 and page 319 there is an event which makes the listener or reader think that this tape/book is over. We've arrived at THE happy ending and all is right with the world. I got there, breathed a sigh of relief, and then fumbled around to discover, "Oh no, it's not over yet, there are seven more tapes and all is probably NOT right with the world! That was certainly true. I just don't feel like I can tell you much more of the story because there is so much for the listener/reader to find out as they go along. I didn't have a clue about Sara, the killing, the revenge or anything that I've told you so far for many hours into the tape so you already have a head start.
I will tell you that another tragic event happens around tape 15 and once again I thought, "OK this has GOT to be the end." That is the one thing that I really do enjoy about SK's writing. He ties up all loose ends. I don't know how many movies or books I've seen or read that end, and my ordered mind tells me there's a whole other story going to happen just to get everything cleared up after the credits roll. They aren't going to just ride off into the sunset with everything being OK. I want closure and SK gives you that. He spends another whole tape and 150 pages explaining what happens after all the tragedy, the ghosts, and the magnets. He lets the reader know that even though some people didn't make it through this story, there is a happy ending and good does win out over evil. I like that about his stories! There's almost always a good and a bad and if that's the case, the good always comes out the winner. That doesn't mean that all was roses along the way and that all was happy for every character as it used to be in a Doris Day movie. I would recommend BOB to you. SK is a most mesmerizing storyteller and in BOB proves himself to be the SK for the new millennium, with heart and wit showing through the suspense.