[BOOK REVIEW]
Stephen King (Hachette Australia: Hodder & Stoughton) 2022, 608pp, RRP $32.99 (paperback); $59.99 (hardback); $44.99 (audiobook)
King’s latest doorstep of a novel is, like all his books nowadays, too long and overwritten, and yet while his tomes of late have all been at least 50 pages too long, this drones on for more than a hundred past its welcome. Does he even have editors these days? And are they too overawed to dare question him?
A very Stephen-King-esque seventeen-year-old schoolkid named Charlie Reade lives in the expected small American town and tells us about his life: how his Mum died in a terrible accident when he was seven; how his dad became an alcoholic; and, after several bad years, how he managed to clean up with help from AA. However, atheist Charlie prayed to God to help his dad, so when Dad comes good Charlie feels like he must perform a major good deed himself.
When Charlie finds reclusive neighbour Howard Bowditch badly hurt after falling from a ladder, he tries to help the grumpy old git by hanging around during his supposed recovery, although he’s also there to look after Bowditch’s ailing old dog Radar. After a series of convoluted circumstances, Bowditch dies and leaves the property to Charlie, which leads our hero to check out a mysterious shed and discover a portal to a wildly elaborate fantasy realm where, just perhaps, poor old Radar can be saved from the inevitable.
However, Charlie instead finds himself in the middle of what, in synopsis, sounds like a very darkly fantastique fairy tale, but which in King’s hands becomes something so crazily over-the-top and verbosely detailed that even his ‘Constant Readers’ might give up the ghost.
Charlie’s encounters with a farting giant and in a prison run by skeletal zombie sorts straight out of EC Comics are intermittently exciting, and yet the sheer overlength of everything does tend to spoil the suspense. And, therefore, instead you might prefer to check out the glimmers of other King books here: the portal is like the one in his 11/22/63, for example.
Plus, it’s hard not to notice that Charlie’s Dad’s battle with booze is very similar to Stephen’s own, although Dad here turned to drink out of grief, while Stephen, as he would say, just liked it.
And that’s not exactly a fairy tale too.
Dave Bradley
This title is available through the Hachette Australia website. Click HERE to purchase your copy.
