It would seem perfectly natural to bring out some Stephen King for this most creepy time of year, I usually resist, mostly because I'm not a huge fan. I really like his short fiction--collections like
Night Shift and
Different Seasons can be found on my shelves--but his novels generally turn me off. King is a past master of literary wheel-spinning--he wastes a lot of time between big incidents without necessarily developing character or building suspense, and his full-length novels consequently balloon to sometimes hundreds of pages longer than they need to be.
His latest novel,
Joyland, released through the Hard Case Crime imprint, is an exception: It's relatively short (283 pages), tightly paced (very little wheel-spinning) and does a great job of establishing place (an amusement park in North Carolina), time (the 1970s), character and tension.
It may try to do a bit too much in its brief span--it's a murder mystery/ghost story/coming-of-age tale--but that's much preferable to the same amount of incident and character spread over twice as many pages. It's a fun, fast read--perfect for the run-up to Halloween.
2 comments:
What a wonderful, old-time cover, too!
"Joyland" is one of my favorite novels of 2013. While I am more more a fan of King's work than you, I have to agree that he excels at shorter projects. I think he reclaims his strong voice in "Joyland".
Dee, is right about that cover. It is a beauty!
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