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Loading... 11/22/63 (edition 2011)by Stephen King
Work Information11/22/63 by Stephen King
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Uncle Stevie didn't disappoint this Constant Reader. I really wasn't expecting much when I started the novel; I just wanted a good story. Something unique, which I got...in spades. People hear "Stephen King" and automatically think "horror". He's so much more, always has been. But for me, this book was more horrific than Salem's Lot, or Cujo, etc. Why? Because he didn't hold back when describing his idea what would happen when you mess with time. We've all seen the movies/TV shows where the characters travel back in time, and if they step on a butterfly, they cease to exist in the modern world. This story was more of a focus on humanity, morality and the butterfly effect. What would you do if you could travel back in time? Who would you save? How would you make those choices? Could you live with them? I won't go into details about the book itself, too many of the other several thousand reviews have done that. I will say, its worth the read. And if you've never read Stephen King before because you don't like horror, then this book would be, in my opinion, a great introduction to one of the most (if not the most) masterful story tellers of our time. Don't let who the author is or the size of the book scare you off, sit back, and enjoy the ride. Enjoyable yarn. In typical Stephen King fashion, he shows that you can never really undo your past mistakes, and you can't go home again. Not to spoil anything, but there is a nifty crossover with at least one of his earlier works. I noticed that he violates some of the rules he set forth in "On Writing"--he describes some of his characters' physical traits in detail, for example. And, If he hadn't written an original draft back in the 1970s or so, I would wonder if he was capitalizing on the recent trend of alternative-U.S.-history literature--for example, Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America." But as one reviewer points out, we don't find out what happens in the alternative universe U.S.A. until the last 100 pages or so. I cannot give it 4 stars, because I'm nitpicky about details. (1) He misspells Caroline Kennedy's name. (2) He misspells "Killeen." (3) He repeatedly refers to the Dallas area as "Central Texas." A Wikipedia search would have set him straight on that one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Texas (saved at http://tinyurl.com/6ulbf6y). Looking at a Texas map, I can understand why a reasonable person would so err, but one doesn't have to spend much time in Texas to learn that for some reason we all consider the Panhandle WEST Texas, not NORTH Texas. I am aware of no longtime Texans who consider Dallas to be "Central Texas." In fact, "real" central Texans would bristle at the notion! King's stories are usually too far off my scale. I don't even pick them up. But this one was about time travel and Kennedy's assassination so I decided to try it out. I was SO into this book. Too heavy to take to bed, I had to sit up into the wee small hours for a few nights. Even carrying it from one room to the other hurt my hands. Great read.
It all adds up to one of the best time-travel stories since H. G. Wells. King has captured something wonderful. Could it be the bottomlessness of reality? The closer you get to history, the more mysterious it becomes. He has written a deeply romantic and pessimistic book. It’s romantic about the real possibility of love, and pessimistic about everything else. Has the adaptationAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? The author's new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination. In this novel that is a tribute to a simpler era, he sweeps readers back in time to another moment, a real life moment, when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history. Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students, a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night fifty years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane, and insanely possible, mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life, a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Stephen King’s novels are long in part because he does such an excellent job of plot and character development and this is no exception. I repeatedly could not wait to see how this or that particular plot line played out. I was sad where I was supposed to be. Happy where I was supposed to be. Tense where I was supposed to be. It was all there. An excellent read indeed. ( )