Monday, September 22, 2014

Stephen King, tormented souls, "real people" in our everyday world

Mr. MercedesMr. Mercedes by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I gave Stephen King's latest five stars. In Goodreads that means "It was amazing." That is not literally true, because there is nothing amazing about Stephen King producing a five-star book. I had to give it more than four stars because "I really liked it" does not begin to describe the pleasure I found in this novel. King does a wonderful job enabling us to suspend our disbelief in stories that involve the paranormal or supernatural, but when he shines his flashlight into the dark corners of tormented souls, down-to-earth "real people" in our everyday world, his magic is even stronger. I rooted for the flawed hero and the innocents he struggled to protect. I woke up, the morning after finishing the book (today, actually) with the villain's name floating in the forefront of my mind. I marveled at an ending that was truly satisfying without feeling the least bit contrived. I also found one of the bleakest bunch of sentences ever, when he described on page 323 the ruminations of the mass murderer contemplating his next atrocity: "Off you go, killers and killed alike, off you go into the universal null set that surrounds one lonely blue planet and all its mindlessly bustling denizens. Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That's all history is, after all: scar tissue."
Wow! If that doesn't scare (or scar) you away from it, I highly recommend this novel.

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1 comment:

Lelia Louise said...

Thanks for the postt