Synopsis: On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas,
President Kennedy died, and the world changed.
If you had the chance to change history, would you?
Would the consequences be worth it?
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 50 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.
Overall I liked this a lot. It has an interesting premise despite being one that gets used a lot; time travel and alternate history. For me the Kennedy assassination is a historical detail of importance, like Pearl Harbor, but it is not personal. I wasn’t born yet. So I think this book doesn’t touch me like it does people of my parents’ generation. You can tell it was written by someone that age, too, because while it does attempt to show the nasty bits of the late 1950s and early 1960s, mostly it’s a wistfully nostalgic look back at those times. Jake LOVES it there despite dying for his cell phone a couple of times. Clearly from this book and others (IT and The Body mostly) King does, too. The funny part is that he doesn’t take any responsibility for his generation also destroying the whole culture from that time. If it was so wonderful, why’d you wreck it boomers? For a generation so wrapped up in themselves it is the height of irony that they’d be so non-aware about this point. I find it funny anyway.
Mild spoilers -
As usual King doesn’t explain the phenomenon that drives the whole book. Michael Crichton he is not. The time tunnel just exists. It has certain “rules” as Al and Jake understand them. It does certain things. If you want more you’ll just have to make it up yourself. This is why when suddenly at the end he pulls rules out of a hat it upsets the whole tale rather than enhances it. We’ve been going about our mission, moving forward with an idealistic goal in mind and then out of nowhere *bang* there are repercussions. Consequences. Shit happens. And they happen almost precisely in the way they did in Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder. So much so that I laughed. And the Yellow Card Man - what was up with that? What inept “guardians”. If the fabric of time is so fragile and subject to fuckery, why give it such weak protection? It makes no sense. Also, if being such an ineffectual time tunnel keeper is soooo taxing, maybe someone should rotate them more often. Seriously; the inebriated bum act complete with nonsensical ramblings and lack of baths is pretty stupid if you’re trying to prevent someone from wrecking the known universe. Obviously there’s some governance at work here because we get a new Yellow Card Man and he’s got the gift of coherent speech and gives us the big reveal. Jake’s comings and goings and all the big changes have put actual reality in jeopardy. Then why the sweet fuck did you let it get that far? The mechanics are ludicrous. Seriously this needed a Science Fiction editor to help him frame the story.
And what a story it is. Jake is an excellent accidental hero. His passion for righting wrongs is palpable and his dedication is stunning. Besides his own independent fix (aside from the Kennedy thing which is the main event), he tries to right Al’s independent fix as well and keep the girl from the stray bullet which would land her in a wheelchair. Admirable. I like that he remained normal the whole time and didn’t suddenly turn into Jason Bourne. He made mistakes, miscalculations and outright stupid decisions, but that’s what we’d all do.
The time spent in Derry is comforting and fun to the King fan who read and loved IT. No, we don’t see everyone again, but we do come across Bev and Richie and there is still that awful vibe of wrongness about Derry. Later Jake draws parallels between Derry and Dallas and how they both have that same hostility and creeping cruelty in their citizens. It’s nice to be on the inside of things in this respect. We wonder what tortures Dallas as It tortures Derry.
An aspect I hadn’t expected was how human Oswald became in this story. For me, because of my remove from this event, he is nothing more than a cartoon villain...like Charlie Manson and Hitler. Yes, they all did reprehensible and world-altering things, but they’re so exaggerated by the popular media that all proportion is lost and so their humanity. King didn’t make Oswald likable exactly, but he made him human. The monstrous mother, the nasty apartments, the low-grade psychosis, the poor-me effect, the communism, the disillusion and low wage jobs; all of it made him more rounded in character and less of a cardboard cutout. Parts of his life were even portrayed as tender and caring.
But the real sweetness at the bottom of it all is Jake’s time with Sadie. It starts out with a spark that ignites a conflagration and we hope against hope that it will last. I don’t know what it is about the way King describes romance or romantic relationships, but it always rings with the most enviable honesty. No one is perfect, yet the love is intense and the connection very strong. There is a lot of sex, but no smut; he never goes all the way into the bedroom with them and I think that’s a big part of it. The pair is secretive at first, but eventually everyone knows and mostly everyone approves. I LOVED the way Jake put that busy-body woman in her place after Sadie’s attack and injury. Despite knowing that something must happen because of all the foreshadowing about Clayton, I hoped she’d escape. Jake’s beating and subsequent nursing were easier to take somehow and the two incidents balanced each other and made the relationship more about equals supporting and healing each other rather than one being grateful and somehow beholden to the other. I also liked Jake’s innocent slip-ups. Stuff I’d fall into as well; using 2011 slang, making references to things that hadn’t occurred yet, singing as yet unwritten songs. It made the situation much more believable.
The ending is sad, but understandable. Living in what the world has become would be too much agony for anyone who’d lived in this one. As bad as it seems sometimes, it could get a LOT worse and I think just the little bit King described was enough to make me wish Jake would go back for his “reset”. He did, but not without more heartbreak and anguish. The dance with an elderly Sadie afterwards was a nice touch. Funny how she thinks she knew him from somewhere. Must be those darn harmonics again.
Mild spoilers -
As usual King doesn’t explain the phenomenon that drives the whole book. Michael Crichton he is not. The time tunnel just exists. It has certain “rules” as Al and Jake understand them. It does certain things. If you want more you’ll just have to make it up yourself. This is why when suddenly at the end he pulls rules out of a hat it upsets the whole tale rather than enhances it. We’ve been going about our mission, moving forward with an idealistic goal in mind and then out of nowhere *bang* there are repercussions. Consequences. Shit happens. And they happen almost precisely in the way they did in Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder. So much so that I laughed. And the Yellow Card Man - what was up with that? What inept “guardians”. If the fabric of time is so fragile and subject to fuckery, why give it such weak protection? It makes no sense. Also, if being such an ineffectual time tunnel keeper is soooo taxing, maybe someone should rotate them more often. Seriously; the inebriated bum act complete with nonsensical ramblings and lack of baths is pretty stupid if you’re trying to prevent someone from wrecking the known universe. Obviously there’s some governance at work here because we get a new Yellow Card Man and he’s got the gift of coherent speech and gives us the big reveal. Jake’s comings and goings and all the big changes have put actual reality in jeopardy. Then why the sweet fuck did you let it get that far? The mechanics are ludicrous. Seriously this needed a Science Fiction editor to help him frame the story.
And what a story it is. Jake is an excellent accidental hero. His passion for righting wrongs is palpable and his dedication is stunning. Besides his own independent fix (aside from the Kennedy thing which is the main event), he tries to right Al’s independent fix as well and keep the girl from the stray bullet which would land her in a wheelchair. Admirable. I like that he remained normal the whole time and didn’t suddenly turn into Jason Bourne. He made mistakes, miscalculations and outright stupid decisions, but that’s what we’d all do.
The time spent in Derry is comforting and fun to the King fan who read and loved IT. No, we don’t see everyone again, but we do come across Bev and Richie and there is still that awful vibe of wrongness about Derry. Later Jake draws parallels between Derry and Dallas and how they both have that same hostility and creeping cruelty in their citizens. It’s nice to be on the inside of things in this respect. We wonder what tortures Dallas as It tortures Derry.
An aspect I hadn’t expected was how human Oswald became in this story. For me, because of my remove from this event, he is nothing more than a cartoon villain...like Charlie Manson and Hitler. Yes, they all did reprehensible and world-altering things, but they’re so exaggerated by the popular media that all proportion is lost and so their humanity. King didn’t make Oswald likable exactly, but he made him human. The monstrous mother, the nasty apartments, the low-grade psychosis, the poor-me effect, the communism, the disillusion and low wage jobs; all of it made him more rounded in character and less of a cardboard cutout. Parts of his life were even portrayed as tender and caring.
But the real sweetness at the bottom of it all is Jake’s time with Sadie. It starts out with a spark that ignites a conflagration and we hope against hope that it will last. I don’t know what it is about the way King describes romance or romantic relationships, but it always rings with the most enviable honesty. No one is perfect, yet the love is intense and the connection very strong. There is a lot of sex, but no smut; he never goes all the way into the bedroom with them and I think that’s a big part of it. The pair is secretive at first, but eventually everyone knows and mostly everyone approves. I LOVED the way Jake put that busy-body woman in her place after Sadie’s attack and injury. Despite knowing that something must happen because of all the foreshadowing about Clayton, I hoped she’d escape. Jake’s beating and subsequent nursing were easier to take somehow and the two incidents balanced each other and made the relationship more about equals supporting and healing each other rather than one being grateful and somehow beholden to the other. I also liked Jake’s innocent slip-ups. Stuff I’d fall into as well; using 2011 slang, making references to things that hadn’t occurred yet, singing as yet unwritten songs. It made the situation much more believable.
The ending is sad, but understandable. Living in what the world has become would be too much agony for anyone who’d lived in this one. As bad as it seems sometimes, it could get a LOT worse and I think just the little bit King described was enough to make me wish Jake would go back for his “reset”. He did, but not without more heartbreak and anguish. The dance with an elderly Sadie afterwards was a nice touch. Funny how she thinks she knew him from somewhere. Must be those darn harmonics again.
1 comments:
I read your intro and skipped the spoilers...want to read the book and find out for myself. I am intrigued by your intro and appreciate you posting it.
Thx
Post a Comment