Oh, Stephen, Stephen. I've been
a faithful reader of yours for years, loving your relaxed way of
writing, the way your characters were everyday Joes finding
themselves in unusual circumstances, the uneasy sense of evil lurking
under their metaphorical beds. Then you decide to venture into new
territory, and why not? Artists need to reinvent themselves to keep
being relevant. Still, there was something not quite right about your
latest offering.
The titular date is the date of the assassination of president Kennedy that took place in Dallas almost 50
years ago. Jake, our hero, wasn't even born back then. He's a teacher
in his thirties, recently divorced, living in 2011. Until one day,
his good friend Al shows him the portal to the past he's found in his
hamburger joint's storage room.
Everyone's favourite teacher will go
back to the past to change the world. But everyone knows what happens
if you meddle with the past, right? Big no-no.
It's a bit slow in the beginning. Then
it picks up speed when Jake travels back to 1958, and King is back to
his usual, much-loved depictions of small-town Maine life. Then it
sags. Big time. But by then you're two-thirds into this gigantic
novel and you just have to see how it ends.
This book could have been shorter by
200 pages or so. A large part of it is dedicated to following Lee
Oswald's life the years prior to the assassination. I am not American,
so maybe that's why this whole part of the Kennedy assassination
mythology left me yawning? There was something unlikeable about Jake,
too. It's one thing to drop your main character into a situation
where he has no choice but to save himself and the others that are in
it. It's yet another thing to create a character that willingly takes
it upon himself to save the world. It tastes funny...like hubris.
Not really a book I would recommend to
anyone except die-hard King fans and Kennedy assassination conspiracy
theorists. But I will keep buying his books, because when he
produces a good novel, he's a lot of fun to read.
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