11.22.63 by Stephen King (Hodder)
Stephen King’s latest book is the size of a small dog. It is 740 pages long and with a theme as ambitious as its physical dimensions.
It can be a weekend read but it will take you most of the weekend to read it. Here is a book that is not so much hard to put down as difficult to pick up. But this big book has a big story to tell. The premise is this: what if you could travel back in time to foil the assassination of JFK? Would this be a good or bad thing for history and humanity?
My advice is to read this book in instalments. I also predict this will be a very popular stocking filler this Christmas. Just make sure you have a very big stocking to fit it into it.
11.22.63 is the book that Stephen King wanted to write from the very beginning of his career: as far back as 1971 in fact. Instead he wrote a book about a killer dog – Cujo.
He grew up in Sixties America and was 16 when JFK was assassinated. In fact in answer to that question - where were you when the President was shot - King was in the back of a hearse (the converted hearse was taking him to school).
From its opening line (‘I have never been what you’d call a crying man’) you are nailed to 11.22.63.
It tells the tale of Jake Epping, a 35-year-old from Maine, who is zapped back to 1958. His mission is to stop the assassination of JFK and Stephen King gives him five years to change the course of history. He assumes a new identity, gets a new life, meets the love of his life and sets out to track down Lee Harvey Oswald and stop that fateful day in Dallas from ever happening.
But Epping’s mission is fraught with danger: this is not the silver bullet of simply tracking down Lee Harvey Oswald and taking him out of the picture. After all was it indeed Oswald who fired those fatal shots? So we get a tale that in turn has to navigate not only time but conspiracy theories and all else.
A new King novel – and he has written over 40 – is an event in itself. News of 11:22:63’s imminent arrival came in the form of a contract – sign this document and we’ll give you a numbered manuscript.
In any case I received this on the date of publication so I didn’t have to engage in any such pact. But it left you in no doubt. King is the king of the thrill: his books are worldwide bestsellers that appeal to all ages and nationalities and with his latest subject – another shot heard round the world – he has found the perfect match for his ambition and cleverness.
At its kernel 11.22.63 plays with the old ‘what if’ – as in that old chestnut what if you could travel back in time and kill Hitler? That would surely have saved millions of lives and we’d all be better off today. Or would we? The tagline for 11:22:63 puts it as ‘the day that changed the world’. So ‘what if you could change it back?’
Stephen King is touted as the master of horror. And yes classic texts like The Shining, Salem’s Lot and IT have long ago earned him that right. But beyond these horrors, and everything else, King is a master of storytelling. He really flexes his muscles with 11.22.63, a magnum opus that draws to some degree on his own childhood and early years.
To be honest I’m still reading the book. I’m still gripped. And I still don’t have a clue how it will all pan out. But then what more could you ask for from a book the size of a small dog.
Love and Summer by William Trevor (Penguin)
In total contrast to King's book is the slim and compact Love and Summer: a bittersweet love story set in Ireland some sixty or so years ago.
William Trevor is Ireland’s greatest living writer. Love and Summer, which was published in the summer of 2009 is proof of this.
It is a timeless story of love set in Ireland some time after the middle of the last century.
At its centre is Ellie, a shy young farmer’s wife who falls in love one summer’s day with a young photographer named Florian who is visting the local village. Not much happens in the village and when the handsome but hopeless Florian appers Ellie falls hopelessly in love. As the summer progresses their chaste relationship takes on its own momentum but others are watching.
It is barely over 200 pages and the final fifty wil have you on the edge of your seat. Trevor is not Stephen King but they both are artful storytellers and the Irishman can put so much into a simple phrase.
For those who loved Colm Tóibin’s Brooklyn, which got a lot of coverage, this is an even finer book: a tale of young love in the Irish countryside in the 1950s with a turn of phrase and insight into humanity’s workings and failings that is hard to match.
It didn’t receive as much recognition as it should have and I rate it the finest book of romance in recent times. It is a heartbreaking book, written in exquistive prose that seems effortless but is anything but.
William Trevor is still living and working in Cornwall. If you have read nothing by him before this slim and elegant book is an ideal starting point.
