Excellent. I'd never read anything of Stephen King's until recently. The movies with his name attached didn't impress me, and his book titles and plot summaries didn't appeal to me. That's too bad because I realize now that I've missed out. This is some great writing. I was attracted to it by the Carny angle, but it was really an emotional roller coaster ride through a short time in a young man's life. I was briefly a carnival worker myself, for about as long as the protagonist is one in this novel. So, yeah, I was a little surprised at some of the carny terms King put in this, but he explained in the author's note at the end that he made many of them up. I don't think he had to make them up, there's plenty of carny lingo to go around, and he made it clear in the story itself that every carnival/roadshow has some of its own lingo, so it didn't really need explaining.
Anyhoo, I also usually don't go in for murder mysteries, but there have been some writers that really knock it out of the park: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, John D. MacDonald. And now I put Stephen King in that category. One of the best.
The attention to detail is extraordinary. And King is writing here and now, letting us know that his stories connect to the here and now, and he does it casually, using references to ideas and events all of us are familiar with, both in our childhoods and today. He's not a writer locked away outside of society, unaware of real life. I suppose that will eventually make his stories seem ancient and irrelevant to young readers fifty or a hundred years from now, but hey, I enjoy an old Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett novel as much as more contemporary novelists, so I don't think all of King's novels will ever be forgotten.
I really enjoyed Joyland. Kept me thinking, wondering, guessing, and loving the characters. Tugs at the heartstrings too, and not because that sells, but because that's life: you take the good with the bad and make the best of life as you can. Clichés, of course, but still good advice.
Anyhoo, I also usually don't go in for murder mysteries, but there have been some writers that really knock it out of the park: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, John D. MacDonald. And now I put Stephen King in that category. One of the best.
The attention to detail is extraordinary. And King is writing here and now, letting us know that his stories connect to the here and now, and he does it casually, using references to ideas and events all of us are familiar with, both in our childhoods and today. He's not a writer locked away outside of society, unaware of real life. I suppose that will eventually make his stories seem ancient and irrelevant to young readers fifty or a hundred years from now, but hey, I enjoy an old Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett novel as much as more contemporary novelists, so I don't think all of King's novels will ever be forgotten.
I really enjoyed Joyland. Kept me thinking, wondering, guessing, and loving the characters. Tugs at the heartstrings too, and not because that sells, but because that's life: you take the good with the bad and make the best of life as you can. Clichés, of course, but still good advice.
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