I just finished reading my first Stephen King novel and what a great experience it has been. Truthfully I’m a slave to all things beautiful and there are so many exquisite moments captured with language that I remain and will forever be a devotee of the literary novel.
For many years I have scorned (well maybe not quite scorned) but was closed to other kinds of literary experiences (and really what’s that about? I am the person after all, who spent almost all of my teenage years and early twenties ploughing through one Harlequin romance after the other interspersed with whatever naughty book I could get my hands on.
But back to Stephen King – I was lured into reading it because part of the book took place during the late 50’s which was close enough to the 60s ( my favourite decade of all time) to make me take a leap of faith. Plus it has a nifty time travel element that allows the reader (and the writer) to explore the kind of place America would be if America’s favourite president of all time escaped assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald – and was saved by the time travelling protagonist of the book.
I don’t care if there isn’t a pretty sentence in this book (and there isn’t). This is a great read – and according to my Stephen King loving colleague – the book contains all the great elements of great King storytelling – a creepy little town, a teacher hero, two little wiser than their years dancing kids and no doubt countless other similarities.
This book reads like a mountain of candy. I couldn’t put it down. It’s scary, it’s light, there’s a love story, an awesome time travel element, and King creates a great sense of place – particularly when our hero time travels back in time to 1958 to save President Kennedy‘s life.
Condofire 