11/22/63: A Novel

The story: Given that the novel is so long, please pardon me for pasting the blurb and adding a few titbits afterwards. Here you go:

“November 22nd, 1963 was a rapid-fire sequence of indelible moments: Shots ring out; a president slumped over; a race to the Dallas hospital; an announcement, blood still fresh on the First Lady’s dress. But what if President John F. Kennedy didn’t have to die; if somehow his assassin could have been thwarted? For Maine schoolteacher Jake Epping, those hypothetical what if’s become real possibilities when he walks through a portal to the past. Without special skills and still unfamiliar with his new/old surroundings, he struggles to discover a way to change the history he left.”

Al, the propriety of the eponymous diner is dying of cancer. He calls Jake over when he realises his days are numbered and reveal the rabbit hole to him. Through this conduit, 35-year-old Jake returns to America in 1958 and luxuriates in ginger ale that was …”full. Tasty all the way through”. Jake’s entree in the past’s menu is served up by an essay that was written by one of his students, a man named Harry Dunning who has studied for his GED. Harry, who is old enough to be Jake’s father, had an assignment to write about a day that changed his life. He wrote about when his father went all Amityville on his mother and siblings with a sledge hammer when Harry was a boy in 1958. So off goes Jake, armed with a few supplies by Al and a few nuggets of information to save the Dunning family and return to 2011 to see what would change if he succeeded. His first attempt fails and so he returns to 1958 to try again. He succeeds this time. Homeboy has 5 years however, with which to while away time until JFK is assassinated. Or not if Jake has it Al’s was.

Jake is charmed by 1958 America but not all parts of it. He hates Dallas (where Oswald lives) so he moves to small-town Jodie where he falls in love with the local librarian, Sadie. She’s a smart one and realises something is askew with her new lover. His use of ‘dude’ and singing a Rolling Stone’s song about shagging drunk chicks or something along those lines gives the game away.

Anyho, he admits his otherworldly-ness to Sadie and in true Bonnie style, she goes along for the ride with her lover to ensure that JFK’s presidency remains uninterrupted. Jake succeeds in thwarting Oswald’s assassination but Sadie gets killed in the process. Mission accomplished and heart torn apart, Jake returns to 2011. It is Armaggedon – the world is a terrible, terrible wasteland. He happens to meet Harry Dunning who tells in him in so many words that Kennedy’s decisions in the white house caused this.

He promptly returns to 1958 to reset his actions; each time he goes down the rabbit-hole, the past resets itself. The novel ends with Jake finding 80-something-year-old Sadie who has no clue who he is. And how they danced.

Rewa’s take on things: If you this equation, King = Horror, resonates with you, you’re dead wrong. Ok, maybe dead  isn’t apt – you’re very wrong more like. Most people unfairly pigeon hole King into the Horror category but he delivers so much more than that. Mr King is a certified don. I had forgotten how much I liked his work until Amazon’s wonderful marketing machine churned the 11.23.63 recommendation my way. I finished this novel in 3 days (even with my 9-na-5) because I was that eager. King just has a way of captivating his audience; he certainly cast a magical spell on me.

 In 11.23.63, the premise of time travel rooted deep in sci-fi doesn’t appear far-fetched or ludicrous because King makes it so credible, so desirable. I found it refreshing that there was no faffing around; within the first 25 pages, Jake descends down the invisible steps in Al’s pantry and into 1958 Maine. The characters had depth; I like Jake Epping’s unobtrusive narration. Small, marked touches like Sadie’s unusual height (she’s 6 feet tall, 2 inches taller than yours truly – so jealous!!!) in a period where women were so dainty, made the story that much more real. Usually when authors give a key character the limelight, in a bid to make them memorable, they give them irritating habits (see Zuba in The Shadow Of A Smile for example) which detract from the story. None of this was evident in Jake Epping. It may sound strange but I felt that Epping was King’s Adam (created in his image and all that jazz). In the author’s afterthought, King confirms as much.  Lee Harvey Oswald was a worm and I HATE any man who raises his hand to a woman, no matter the circumstance (Chris Brown might still get it though ;-)). The subliminal prevalence of the jimla was another way that King kept my interest piqued – King could have easily used this to turn the novel into a cheap horror flick but he didn’t. The Yellow Card Man was also an interesting character I wish could have been explored in a bit more depth; we only understand his part in the bigger picture in a few pages. Who else wondered what would have happened had Jake given him a dollar instead of 50 cents?

And oh wasn’t 1958 lovely? Girls in long poodle skirts were lindy-hopping and jitterbugging with boys with crew cuts. Reading of Jake’s meanderings and interactions with the people of erstwhile days had a hazy, surreal feel to it, akin to viewing the world on an old reel. Simply magical. For a moment, history is in your hands and then you lose it again. A bit like a child who accidentally lets go of a balloon. Goodness, I’m such a pretentious, pseudo- literary arty-farty!

The sheer amount of effort and research King must have invested to construct this period piece is astounding and for that he deserves a Birkin. Hmm actually make that an IWC horology extravaganza (proceeds from this novel probably got him that anyway). In 11.23.63, King’s craftsmanship, like an IWC, is fine. He has you begging for more of the nostalgia that he engrains so well in his readers, you yearn for more pages on the world that is not here anymore. The minutia of Oswald and Marina’s decrepit lives add to the brevity of the story.

I wasn’t quite sure how King would end this one, how on earth would he go on to depict America if Kennedy had lived? I was a bit let-down with this denouement. I felt that the Armageddon, Chernobyl-esque America was rather farfetched and bombastic. Whilst still enjoyable, I was quite ready for the novel to end once Epping returned back to the 2010 for the last time and I give King credit for ending the novel when he did and the way he did. The slight, and I mean slight, let-down for me was the Jake-embraces-Jodie-life-and-falls-in-love-with-Sadie longueur.  

Whatever the novel’s flaws, it is a rich reading experience laden with pathos. One thing though, I’m very grateful for my Kindle because Lord knows I don’t have the muscular capacity to lug this tome around . Oh and if you didn’t hit google the minute you were done to search “JFK Assassination” “Lee Oswald Marina” and most importantly, “Jackie Kennedy Pink Chanel Suit”, you’re either a liar or a weirdo!

 

 

The Invisible Man

The story: Told as a series events from an omnipresent narrator, we learn of the Invisible Man’s (Griffin)  arrival at the quiet, provincial village of Iping. Things start to go awry as the locals become increasingly curious about this strange dude who wraps his head up in bandages and wears reflective goggles. Eventually they discover that he is invisible and faeces hits those fan blades. He tries to escape, enlisting the help of a buffoon who runs away with Griffin’s money and indecipherable notebooks (which detailed the constructs of the invisibility potion). Griffin goes nuts and decides to establish a reign of terror amongst the villagers with the assistance of fellow ex-medic, Dr Kemp. Kemp does him greasy and blows the lid on Griffin’s evil plans. I forgot to mention that Griffin could do with a few anger management sessions and when he discovers what Kemp has done, he vows to kill him. He gets very close to enacting this vengeance but the villagers gang up on him and he gets killed with a shovel (if I remember correctly). How pleasant. Just in case you were wondering, he becomes visible again once his soul flees to fire-and-brimstone-land. The story ends with the tramp leering over Griffin’s three notebooks and dreaming of how he will eventually decipher it and earn a fortune. Not a chance.

Rewa’s take on things: A thoroughly enjoyable read. Having read this and War Of The Worlds, I am tempted to seek out more of Wells’s work. Griffin was a pain in the a*se and had such a sense of entitlement that one would have thought he was Drake (he’s so hot that he can demand whatever he pleases on any day ending with a “y” ;-).

If I was invisible for a day, here’s a list of things I’d do in order of importance:

1. Raid Laduree for macaroons – will need some fuel to feed the shopping frenzy I’ll inevitably embark on.
2. Next stop would be Aspinal to get that orgasmic pony-skin wheelie (in black). Have to lug all my accoutrements around somehow and a girl only has two hands and two elbows!
3. Then off to Hermes to get a couple more scarves and another Dogon togo leather wallet. Just because.
4. MARC JACOBS!!! He would get it! To get all the other bags that I don’t already own.
5. Hmm then being the generous, loving girlfriend that I am, I’d head to John Lobb to get the lover yet another pair of shoes and some crap from Albam. Actually, Albam isn’t dear enough to steal from, maybe the Mason Martin Margiela concession at Liberty then…
6. Commit arson at every Jane Norman store in sight. And L’Occitane too actually…
7. After all this, I’d pop over to UCL to beg my ex-professors to sort out all this invisibility mess! Haven hidden my loot of course!

So you see from my sensible list above, I thought the invisible man rather daft. I read the details of his comeuppance with a sense of Schadenfreude I must say.  In my opinion, had he been less of a troll to everyone, he’d have fared better! On a more serious note, it was sad that his whilst his albinism set him apart as a pariah, he fared no better being invisible which he thought would solve his problems.

There is no doubt that Wells is a master of sorts at science fiction, I found The Invisible Man and War Of The Worlds equally thrilling. With this novella, he took the near-absurd concept of invisibility and spun the crap out of it. I say near-absurd because some x-factor contestants are so irrelevant that they made as well be invisible *insert evil grin* I kid I kid!

In a nutshell, a short but very enjoyable read with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.

Let The Right One In/Let Me In

The story: Oskar is a regular 12 year old kid who gets bullied at school by Tommy and his cohorts. He lives in an apartment block with his single mother (his dad is a raging alcoholic who has days of normality until he spots a beer). He also suffers from incontinence (and uses an ingenious contraption called a ‘pissball’ to prevent leakages appearing on his clothes – helloooo Dragon’s Den!) and is slightly tubby as a result of his comfort eating.

Oskar is also sort of obsessed with murderers and gruesome killings which he cuts out newspapers and sticks into his scrapbook – think sinister version of Mean Girls Burn Book sans fluffy pink cover. He imagines himself enacting this macabre acts of violence on his tormentors. Oskar is outside practising stabbing a tree and calling it “piggy”, which you can already guess, is his bullies’ moniker of choice. Enter Eli. Eli is a young, pretty little girl, about the same age as Oskar, everything about her seems normal-ish except that she smells like a rotting wound, has matted hair and walks around in unsuitable clothes in the freezing Swedish climate. Apart from that, she’s just your regular girl-next-door. They get chatting, well not exactly chatting, awkward conversation more like and before leaving, she tells Oskar that they cannot be friends because “that’s the way it is”.

 The following day, Oskar returns to the concrete jungle playground where they first met and pretends to be playing with his Rubik’s cube. Eli resurfaces and curiosity gets the better of her. Scene ends with Oskar giving her the Rubik’s cube to solve even though she ominously declares, “I may not be here tomorrow”. By now, I’m sure you’ve guessed that she isn’t a regular wee lassie.

 A bit about Eli. Centuries ago, her mother was a peasant on a farm belonging to a Count Dracula wannabe. He asked for all the young boys on his farm to be brought to him. After a random eeny meeny miney mo selection process, Eli gets taken into a room where she is castrated, blood collected and drunk. Although not explicitly said, you get the idea that the old pederast converted Eli into a vampire – probably to have a young boy around on whom to practise his carnal fantasies forever. As you’ve probably guessed, Eli isn’t a she. In the 21^st century, and tons of anti-ageing cream later, she moved into the neighbourhood with a dude called Hakan, whom Oskar assumes to be her father. Hakan is a revolting character; he’s a paedophile and just reading about his encounters with young children sends shudders down my spine and bile up my gut! He refers to Eli as his Beloved and loves nothing more than for her to turn around and show him what she’s working with, if you get my meaning. Hakan is Eli’s pawn, sort of. He skulks around collecting blood for her in a flask.

Fast forward a bit. When Hakan refuses to kill again for Eli, she has to do it herself so she feasts on a drunk outside she finds in some desolate alleyway. His other drunkard comrades determine to find his killer. When Hakan discovers what Eli has done, he says he will go out and get more blood for her if she agrees to let him lie with her for just one night – she agrees. Sheer ineptitude results in the old perv getting caught in the act and proceeds to pour acid on his face to disfigure himself, thus removing any association with Eli. Unfortunately, he survives and is taken to the hospital where Eli comes to pay him a visit. He asks her to drink his blood but doesn’t snap his neck (this prevents the virus from spread and perpetuating vamps). Now we are left with a disfigured peado-vamp who Iooks like a walking sack of raw flesh (acid remember). Oh and he has a permanent erection. YUCK.

He sets off to find his Beloved and when he does, he tries to rape her up the duff and almost succeeds but Eli manages to get away. He then tries to leave to get some arsenic to burn down this detestable creature but it is daylight outside and we all know the legend about the sun and vamps. He tries anyway, to get back to Hakan to turn him into a true crispy critter but the sun proves too much for him. One of the drunkards I mentioned earlier, Lacke, vows to kill Eli because he fed on one his cronies and she killed herself when she realised she’d been turned into a vampire. Lacke manages to get into Eli’s apartment where he is found immersed in bath tub full of blood. Lacke pulls out the plug (what a busy body) and is about to kill Eli when Oskar intervenes and saves Eli’s life. Eli feasts on Lacke. Oskar falls asleep in Elis apartment and awakens to find Eli gone.

Back at school, the head bully in charge gets his older, equally insidious brother to come into school and take care of Oskar. They hold his head down in the pool until he becomes unconscious and are about to take out his eye with a stiletto when Eli turns up. You find out from later articles that Eli ripped both their heads off. He’s strong for a 12 year old eh? The novel ends with several little snippets. A newspaper article on scientists conducting experiments on Hakan’s body tissue. A conductor seeing Oskar on a train surrounding by several vintage suitcases (bet they’re Goyard – Eli was minted) and asks him whether he’ll be alright to alight with so many cases. To which Oskar crptically responds, “I will have help at the other end”. The end.

Rewa’s take on things: Brilliant novel  – so good I devoured it in 3 days even though I work a Ny-ra-fahv (9-2-5). Lindqvist did a superb job in developing his characters and making you feel both sympathetic and revolting at the same time.

What adds to the brilliance of Lindqvist’s story is that it does not focus on the surreal or unimaginable supernatural but rather grim, harsh reality. The story transcends your bog standard vampire fable of immortality, bloodlust and some annoying damsel-in-distress to explore avenues pertaining to reciprocated love and all things deep and profound. The only flaw, in my humble opinion, was the Hakan-cum-pederast-cum-vampire subplot. Hakan worships Eli with a sexual compulsion which eventually drives him to the utterly horrific. I could have certainly done without the image of a disfigured vampire skulking round with an erection which he promptly tries to shove into Eli at first opportunity. Twilight this thankfully ain’t! This isn’t just a story of garlic-phobia and blood lust.  It’s one that encompasses bullying, prostitution, paedophilia, teenage angst, alcoholism and desperate loneliness.

After reading the novel, I decided to watch both the Swedish and American adaptations. Surprisingly enough, I preferred the latter. I thought Chloe Moretz made a great Eli (or Abby – why on earth were the names changed?). I must say, both movies, whilst entertaining, are reductionist to the point of absurd and do not do the novel any justice. Surprising because LIndqvist himself wrote both adaptations… maybe he needed a redbull or two…

I really felt a lot for both Oskar and Eli. Matter of fact, my heart bled for all the characters. Each had their own burden to bear and no matter how despicable their thoughts or actions were, I still found myself wishing and hoping they’d find some sort of redemption or salvation. The only people that did were Oskar and Eli and that was in each other. As far as Oskar’s character was concerned, I felt the novel gave a real insight into the importance of a father figure in a young boy’s life and the importance of
companionship for an only child. The saddest thing for him as far as I’m concerned, was being consigned to carting round a funnel to feed a vamp for the rest of his days.

Lindqvist succeeds at maintaining his point of view shifts which can so easily lose a reader; even the chapter written from the squirrel’s point of view is executed brilliantly when it could have easily bordered on the ridiculous. All in all, you are kept on the edge of your seat (or whatever position it is you maintain whilst engrossed in a novel, I prefer to lie on my side with my head propped up on a pillow that has been folded in two) as the characters head unavoidably into a maelstrom.

It’s a rollercoaster of a novel – inducing so much nausea at times with its brutality and perverseness that I  feared I might get a stomach ulcer. Great job Lindqvist.

 

The Passage

This tome is the size of the box I store my rings in and they’re huge Swarovski knuckle-dusters! Nonetheless, I’m a trooper and once you’ve read Tolstoy, size ceases to matter…

The story: The US military (who else *rolls eyes*) is at it again. This time, with project NOAH, investigating the effects of a virus found in Bolivian bats on human subjects, twelve convicts on death row to be more exact. All with the hope of creating superhumans, for want of a better word. The scientist, Lear, is the mastermind behind this insanity and his colleague, Fanning who was also in Bolivia and attacked by these bats and is now one of the test subjects. Excluding Fanning who is “The Zero”, you have “The Twelve”. They are a cross between humans, glow sticks and vampires who hang upside down and decimate rabbits for grub. They are also near enough invincible bar their achilles hill (their solar plexus) and also have telepathic abilities.
They soon start invading the minds of the employees at the base camp who start to go cuckoo. As an aside, for every 9 humans they feed on, one is transformed into a viral. Later on in the book, you see that the transformed seem to share a communal mind with the glow stick in The Twelve who transformed them. Oh and they also shed and grow teeth (or fangs rather) at an alarming rate – times like these I bet Lear wishes he’d studied dentistry!

In parallel, a small time, abject waitress in one of those diners out somewhere in America’s wastelands  bumps and grinds with some random, abusive, married dude and out pops Amy. They’re unable to maintain the upkeep on the house so they start living out of her car. Eventually, Amy’s mother turns to exchanging v-jay-jay usage for cash and she kills a young university boy when things go awry. She decides it would be better to go on the run from the law and leaves Amy in a convent.*Plays violin loudly in the background*. Exit Amy’s mother and enter Sister Lacey Kudoto whom I found a bit batty if I’m to be frank. 6-year-old Amy is a very reticent child who rarely speaks; she was taught to be quiet whenever her mother had “guests” around. The first glimpse we get of Amy’s paranormal spirit is when Sister Lacey takes her to a zoo. The polar bears start communing with her and she tells Sister Lacey, “They know what I am”. Soon enough, Amy’s presence sends all the animals into pandemonium.  Another parallel, Wolgast and Dudley (two FBI agents) have been sent to kidnap Amy, the scientist requested a child to use as a test subject. The rationale behind this was that the thymus gland in a child isn’t fully developed therefore the virus might produce more favourable results. Wolgast has serious reservations about this but captures Amy outside the zoo but he tries to escape with her. It doesn’t happen. He loves Amy because he recently lost his own little girl. Eventually, Amy is taken to Lear and hit with the virus but she doesn’t transform into something like The Twelve. Carnage erupts that same night and The Twelve and Fanning break loose. What happens next is nothing short of a blood bath. The Twelve have been unleashed.

Fast forward a century later and humans are a rarity in the apocalyptic, primal balance of predator vs prey. The virals, dracs, smokes (as they’re refered to) are everywhere looking for some good old haemoglobin to ingest. The humans live in fear of darkness (like other archetypal vamps, these virals are adverse to light – SPF50 just won’t cut it). I will summarise this part quickly as a breakdown will take far too long and will probably induce carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand. From a colony of about a hundred humans, Theo and six others embark on a journey with Amy back to where it all began. Along the way, they encounter various sets of camps including a hive. One of The Twelve, Babcock (gosh how the novel has conditioned me to detest this name!) ensures the members of the hive are protected as long as they sacrifice 4 cows and 2 humans every full moon. I guess he’s quite generous seeing as he didn’t request dessert eh…

Rewa’s take on things: Starting with the first quarter. I loved the end where the poop finally hits the fan and oh, it splatters everywhere!!! All the characters with the exception of Richards who’s an evil bad ass, have a sob story which I felt added to the emotive tone of the first quarter. I found Sister Lacey very irritating. Some things were just a bit too absurd, like Sister Lacey finding Project NOAH camp all the way from wherever the convent was (more than just a few miles, even a pair of Asics won’t get you there on foot). She runs around the forest like some divinely inspired ninja before infiltrating the camp in ways that James Bond would envy – in the back of a delivery van. WOW. Post-apocalypse, she is reunited with Amy in a scene that sees her singing and hanging out
washing on a line like some deranged housewife! Lear definitely wasted that precious virus juice on her!

I liked Agent Wolgast, I found him to be the most sane person in the entire book and it’s a shame he had to die a radiation-filled, gangrene-infested death. Amy was a bit of a let-down. Following the events at the zoo and seeing as she was constantly referred to as humanity’s only hope, I thought she’d be a bit like Storm out of X-Men, you know, control nature and all that jazz. Yes, I am all about immediate gratification and the obvious – shoot me! For the most part, she remains silent, sometimes she pleads with the virals to not harm her human companions but that’s about it really. Oh and in the end, she destroys the last nine remaining vials of the virus (not the transform-into-bat stuff, the transform-into-Amy kind – the good stuff). What a waste of 100 years and bloodshed!!!!

Carter, the last of The Twelve, I liked. Babcock was just a weirdo who had mummy-issues and was evil! You don’t get to know anything about the other virals but I guess that will come in subsequent novels. I think Richard ought to have been made into a viral, just think of all the blissful carnage he could have caused in the second half *rubs hands together in anticipation*.

The first quarter of the book was MAGNIFICENT. Full of suspense and very, very chilling because one could envisage such events actually transpiring. The restt of the novel was just a bit too drawn-out and not as suspense-filled. I found my brain going on vacay several times… It was difficult to identify with the other characters that followed and they just weren’t as interesting as Babcock and his cronies.

This is definitely not one of those multi-strata novels in which the story is greater than the sum of its parts. On the whole though, it is a story about humanity, what it means to be human, about how tentative and indeterminate humanity’s position in the world is. It is an ambitious, gargantuan undertaking – telling the of the end of the world and self-induced destruction of mankind and Cronin manages to do this in nearly 800 pages. Round of applause.

P.S. Whatever happened to Fanning? He was The Zero. I thought he’d be akin to
Count Dracula or something but there was no mention of him after the first part
of the book! And what on earth did the title, The Passage, have to do with anything in the book? Passage to where exactly???

We Need To Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver damn near killed me with this one. As soon as I read the last word, I thought, ‘Oh no, say it ain’t so’ and promptly returned to the first page to read the story all over again. I RARELY read a novel twice.

The story: Eva Khatchadourian (mouthful or what??!) is a successful 30-something-ish, independent woman who makes a living out of writing travel review books (you go girl!). Her husband is a location scout who isn’t as successful as she is but that’s besides the point – or is it.. *insert suspense music*. The story is structured around a series of letters written from Eva to her now estranged husband, Franklin, who is with their daughter, Celia. The letters tell the story of how the Kevinator came about, from conception to juvenile delinquent cell. In these letters, there are several references to “Thursday” which is what the book is centred on. She never really wanted to have a child to begin with, thinking it would be a career limiting move and all that jazz. From the onset, their mutual disdain for one another is quite obvious. Kevin doesn’t seem to like anyone and he successfully rids himself of several consecutive babysitters. As the story continues, you see that this dude really gives Damien a run for his money! The only time there is a glimmer of humanity in Kevin is when he is sick with a fever for two weeks, he warms up to Eva and implores her to read Robin Hood to him, over and over again. Upon recovery, good old Kevin as we know him returns. Needless to say, he is a lonely outcast regardless of his environment and decides that archery will become his past-time of choice. I’ll leave it at that.

Rewa’s take on things: The brilliance of Lionel’s story-telling ability to keep the reader captivated is such that even though you know that Kevin murders 7 schoolmates, a teacher and a cafeteria worker (the one anomaly in Kevin’s killing plan), you never lose interest in the novel.The coup de grace was one of the best that I have ever come across. It is a gripping read to say the least. Eva’s final poignant words just tug at my heart strings, ” …there is a second bedroom in my serviceable apartment. The bedspread is plain. A copy of Robin Hood lies on the bookshelf. And the sheets are clean”.

There are two general ways that the audience seem to interpret this book; point the finger at Mrs Khatchadourian or conclude that Kevin was satan incarnate. I’m in assent with the latter take on this. However, I am also mindful of that fact that the novel is written from Mrs K’s perspective. I believe that Kevin always sensed his mother’s disdain for him even when he was still a wee sprog (currently based in Glasgow – ignore my inflections!) and their embattled relationship was more proof to me that Kevin was constantly seeking her attention in some shape or form. Mrs K was cold at times (I loved her even more when I found out she drove a VW Beetle as do I) but I mean, come on, the dude was the devil’s spawn. He had such a privileged upbringing, he lacked nothing, had a doting father etc. SO why did he turn out the way he did?

P.s. am I the only one who wanted to take a baseball bat to the dad’s head, for the sole purpose of knocking some sense into his clearly deluded brain???

Let’s discuss…