TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| Angels and Insects A fictional metamorphosis conveys what it means to be alien. feeds.nytimes.com |
Under the Dome by Stephen King | Book review Less would have been more in Stephen King's latest, says a weary Euan FergusonUnder the Cosh, this may as well have been called, which is perhaps a little unfair, but you didn't have to speed-read it inside a week. It's not that this is a bad book. It is, in many ways, a good book: King's take on the America of Bush and 9/11, a nation on the verge of environmental and moral collapse. But it is, in so many other ways, too much, too big, too long. And too Stephen King.Even diehard fans of his peerless imagination, of whom there are justifiably many millions, will struggle with the sheer heft of the thing: it's like carrying around something which is simply wrongly weighted for a book, a hefty dead cormorant or some such, and after a little while it begins to feel like carrying around a grudge.King writes short stories splendidly well and has won awards for them. He has a bizarre little idea and everyone goes: "Oh of course, why could I never think of that?" Normally, however, he judges it just so: the power of the idea is equalled by the length of the execution. Here he's got the proportions wrong.It is a fine idea. A small, typical Maine community finds itself, one day in the very recent past, cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible, impenetrable dome, or Dome. Yes, I know The Simpsons Movie did the same thing, but King reportedly began this 25 years ago. It is not, this being King, a gentle awakening. The dome simply appears one second (miles high, as we soon learn, and extending way below bedrock), and when it appears some hands are pulling out root vegetables and are thus severed, while little planes crash and leave sinister smudges.Some of the early goosebumps come when the eventual hero, Iraq vet Dale "Barbie" Barbara, and a new chum from the other side of the barrier (they can hear each other, and a little air can pass between them, but that's it) walk for miles in parallel, trying to find if it's a wall with an end or a… well, a dome.From then on, we're along well-established lines, from Nevil Shute and before, inflected with the contemporary terror of environmental crisis: the air going bad, the water running out. The community goes to pot. A very bad fat man takes over, with guns. Religious zealots go (even more) mad. The mob, almost, rules, thwarted by a few good oddballs. There is comradeship, love, repentance.There is also paranoia, blame and violations in the name of "security", and it's not hard to see the satire on Bush's America, especially when the main route on the "safe" side of Chester's Mill is the 119. These last few sentences seem terribly reductive; it's better than that. King reads widely, writes widely: there are glancing references to everything from Eliot to Melville to his fellow thriller writer Lee Childs. The existential explanation for the dome is beautifully managed, warmed up and hinted and, yes, keeps the pages turning.The horror is also there. Partly, simply, through the language: King loves language and the way people use it. Take the terrible nastiness of redneck "Junior" Rennie, exposed when a girl's robe falls open and we hear his thoughts about her "breeding-farm", her "goddamn itchy breeding-farm that was all the fuckin trouble". His father, the real baddie, Big Jim, meanwhile, never swears but uses biblical euphemisms instead.So much is sinister, so much plotted with grand intentions and lucid resolution. But despite the book's cover boast that it "took over 25 years to write", it turns out, in King's own honest words – for this is an honest and a brilliant and busy and moral man – at the very end, that it was written between 22 November 2007 and 14 March this year. He had a grand idea, a long time ago, then hammered it out recently in a year and a half. He could have done it as skilfully in a month and saved us the hernias.FictionStephen KingEuan Fergusonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Books of The Times: Once More, Revisiting Anne Boleyn Yet Again A focused, investigative account of the forces that toppled Anne Boleyn from favor and led to her trial and execution. feeds.nytimes.com |
Stephen King makes horrifying guest appearance on rock album Bestselling novelist to provide apocalyptic voiceover for Shooter Jennings concept album Black RibbonsFrom Carrie to It, his horror novels mean Stephen King is already something close to the voice of nightmare for many, but now the bestselling writer is set to make this more literally the case after agreeing to play a doom-mongering radio host on musician Shooter Jennings's new album.The concept album, Black Ribbons, will see King provide the voice of late-night talk show host Will O'The Wisp as he gives his final broadcast before being cut off by government censorship. While his character rants about the apocalyptic future that lies ahead for America, he plays songs from Jennings's band Hierophant.Jennings told music sites that although he had never met King, he knew the author was a fan – King mentions the musician in his novel Lisey's Story – and felt he would be the perfect narrator for the album. "To this day I've never met or spoken to Mr King," he said. "Someone who had business contacts with him put us in touch and I presented my ideas to him. Through a string of emails we went back and forth about the character and the story of the album, and then a few weeks later I had a recording of several voiceover clips – called "The Last Night of the Last Light" – on my doorstep."Jennings said the experience "was like a digital correspondence with a spectre from the other side – very dark, eerie and profoundly mesmerising stuff. I'm extremely grateful and honoured to have him on this record." King said he had "been a huge Shooter Jennings fan from the very beginning, so I was flattered to be asked".This is not King's first venture into rock'n'roll, since he is an occasional member of literary rock group the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose members have included such august names as Amy Tan, Maya Angelou, Barbara Kingsolver and Scott Turow.Black Ribbons is out in March. The album is the latest in a series of new projects for King, who later this year will make his first venture into original comic book writing with a story of the first American vampire. The author has also published a poem in Playboy, and revealed late last year that he was plotting a sequel to The Shining. His latest novel, the 900-page Under the Dome, was published in November.Stephen KingScience fiction, fantasy and horrorPop and rockAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Hardcover Fiction Top 5 at a Glance1. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett2. THE FIRST RULE, by Robert Crais3. THE LOST SYMBOL, by Dan Brown4. THE SWAN THIEVES, by Elizabeth Kostova5. THE LAST SONG, by Nicholas Sparks feeds.nytimes.com |