11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King — novel #261

  

What is the most devastating watershed moment of your lifetime? Would you change it if you could? Can you be certain the world would be better today if you did?

 

Stephen King’s 11/22/63 grapples with these questions in a mesmerizing thriller.

 

• Author: Stephen King
• American Lit, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Fantasy
• Published: 2011
• My edition: Scribner (eBook)
• Setting: Maine, 2011 and Texas early 1960s
• Awards: 2012 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Novel
• Also by this author (that I’ve read): The Stand; Dark Tower Series

 

In 2011, Jake Epping, a divorced high school English teacher from Maine, discovers a time portal, that always takes him back to 1958. No matter how long he stays in the past, when he reverses his path through the portal, he returns two minutes later than the moment in 2011 when he left.

 

And Jake has the chance to re-write history. He just has to hang out in the past for five years or so, until the title date of November 22, 1963, the date of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Stopping that would be a good thing, right? He can’t go back far enough to stop Hitler. He probably wouldn’t live long enough in the past to stop 9/11, but getting Lee Harvey Oswald, that would be well within his sights (pardon the macabre pun).

 

No brainer, right? It’s almost his duty.

 

But Jake learns several nuances of time-travel. Some of these nuances even have real-world names, like the “butterfly effect”: (in chaos theory) whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.

 

If you mix the butterfly effect with time travel, well just buckle up. There is no possible way to predict the outcome. And under no circumstances fall in love whilst redirecting the course of human history.

 

Throughout the story, Jake observes that the past is obdurate. It is almost a consciousness that resists Jake. The bigger changes he attempts to make, the more the past resists. I believe this was King’s main point. The past is obdurate. Some people say everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe the past has a conscience, but I do believe it has a sentient director, and he doesn’t need our help.

 

That’s my point, not King’s, but I don’t think his was far off. He makes a strong case, that even if we have the capability, we shouldn’t go messing with the past.

 

My rating 4 ½ / 5 stars

 

 

 

You probably know that King’s novels are all interconnected; some very bluntly, others more subtle. There’s a fairly blunt allusion in this novel. Jake makes a stop in Derry, Maine, the setting for IT, for some lesser time altering, and he learns there was a string of murders, children mostly, some years back. One of the locals tells him…

 

Other folks say he [the murderer] was a local who dressed up like a clown to keep from being recognized.

I love it when I catch those allusions. I’m certain I miss many.

 

King often references other writers. When Jake was describing the town of Derry, and the despairing malaise he sensed, he compared it to Ray Bradbury’s fictional town of Greentown, from the Green Town Trilogy, which includes Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jake states…

 

But there had been hidden horrors in Bradbury’s Greentown too.

Love that. Jake, the fictional character, had read real life Bradbury’s fiction.

 

Elsewhere, Jake’s love interest in the past, Sadie Dunhill, mentions a short story by Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder, that is entirely about time-travel and the butterfly effect.

 

And in the course of the novel Jake reads Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, and Oswald reads Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

 

Finally two quotations:

 

Sadie reminiscing with Jake about their past…

 

How we danced!

And Jake sometime later to someone else…

 

Dancing is life.

This was an absolutely riveting read. I don’t think I’ve ever read an 800+ page novel so quickly. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by King. I’d welcome your views on Stephen King, and recommendations for what to read next by this prolific author.

 

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The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen (novel #247)

Arthur Machen’s novella The Great God Pan (1894) is set in England and Wales at the turn of the 19th century. It is commonly categorized as horror. I would add sci-fi and fantasy.

It opens in the laboratory of the mad scientist, Dr. Raymond, though some might say I’m being unfair. I don’t believe Machen intended to portray him as absolutely mad, just a bit obsessed. Dr. Raymond intends to lift the veil between the physical world and the spiritual, an occurrence the ancients called “seeing the god Pan”. No problem thus far, but it is Raymond’s method that condemns him. He will perform brain surgery on a young woman, a sort of lobotomy, that he is absolutely convinced will allow the subject to witness the spiritual realm. He claims it is completely safe, and that…

I rescued Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit.

Mad says I. He reminds me of Dr. Frankenstein.

Mary does not come through the operation unharmed. Dr. Raymond calmly observes…

…it is a great pity; she is a hopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and after all, she has seen the Great God Pan.

In other words, not a total loss.

Mad!

 

By the way, he has not one bit of evidence that his conclusion is fact…he just knows it 

Ugh!

 

And indeed it did lift the veil briefly. Raymond’s reckless experiment unleashes an unholy terror on the world, setting the stage for the bulk of the tale. The entity’s terrifying menace on humanity and the suspenseful pursuit by investigators are compelling, but the story stumbles at the start and is ridiculous in the end. Such an opinion begs justification; be warned:

 

SPOILER ALERT

Just the high points: two amateur sleuths track down the otherworldly menace and threaten to call the police unless it hangs itself. Yes, a supernatural being with mind-bending powers commits suicide out of fear of the cops.

Ugh!

 

My rating 2.5 of 5 stars

 

This novel fulfills the “Deity” category for the What’s in a Name? 2025 challenge, as the title features deity.

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The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (novel #234)

Claude Lebel was, as he knew, a good cop.

The Day of the Jackal is the first novel by Frederick Forsyth. It is a political thriller, suspense novel though the very beginning is historical fiction. It recounts an actual assassination attempt on President Charles de Gaulle of France in 1962. The failed attempt was the design of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) [Secret Army Organisation]. The novel then becomes fiction. After repeated failures, the OAS decides their best chance is to hire a foreign professional killer, who is later codenamed the Jackal.

 

The Jackal is dashing and aloof. He’s a bit like James Bond, only a villain. He is almost admirable for his quiet confidence, meticulous planning, and dedication to his task. I’m always a bit uneasy when authors make me feel that…respect for the bad guy.

 

But fortunately, half-way through the story, Forsyth introduces the Jackal’s antithesis, the less flamboyant, but genuinely admirable, Detective Claude Lebel.

 

When the French government learns that a foreign assassin has been hired by the OAS, the entire French security apparatus convenes to stop the killer. There efforts are confounded by the President’s refusal to change his schedule, or to publicly announce the manhunt for the Jackal.

 

Lebel, by virtue of being called the best detective in all of France by the National Commissioner of Police, is chosen to spearhead the hunt for the Jackal.

 

He is also set up to be the fall guy.

 

Claude Lebel was, as he knew, a good cop. He had always been a good cop, slow, precise, methodical, painstaking. Just occasionally he had shown the flash of inspiration that is needed to turn a good cop into a remarkable detective. But he had never lost sight of the fact that in police work ninety-nine percent of the effort is routine, unspectacular enquiry, checking and double-checking, laboriously building up a web of parts until the parts become a whole, the whole becomes a net, and the net finally encloses the criminal with a case that will not just make headlines but stand up in court.

 

“Thriller” is an apt description. I typically pace myself when reading a novel, but this was hard to put down. The political intrigue was maddening. Several of the government ministers arrogantly and foolishly undermine Lebel’s efforts. The characters are superbly believable: the killer, the cop, the petty bureaucrats, or perhaps the lofty bureaucrats, bystanders, and accomplices. But the cat and mouse between the Jackal and Lebel is the real story. The Jackal always seems to be one step ahead, and time is running out.

 

 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

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Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I chose this purposefully for October because I knew Young Goodman Brown was a “spooky” story. I didn’t know all the stories in this collection have a macabre theme. Indeed, macabre is a better description than spooky or horror. The stories are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn was a fan of Hawthorne.

 

The collection contains seven short stories:

 

“Dr. Heidegger's experiment” – despair in the worship of youth

“The birthmark” – folly in the pursuit of perfection

“Young Goodman Brown” – (commentary below)

“Rappaccini's daughter” – tragic, the moral?

“Roger Malvin's burial” – duty and the curse of guilt

“The artist of the beautiful” – obsession

“My kinsman, Major Molineux” – put not your trust in princes

 

Goodman Brown has a date with the devil, though the reader only slowly realizes Brown’s peril. Young Goodman Brown leaves Faith, his beautiful bride against her protestations, to rendezvous with a malevolent companion on a dreary night in a dismal wood. Most troubling, Goodman Brown meets pious and respectable townsfolk, along with scoundrels and blackguards, as they make their way to the unholy convocation. Perhaps it is all a dream. Dream or no, can a man be good? Can Faith survive?

 

I’ve read this collection before, though I didn’t realize it when I started. Vaguely through the mist and motion, of my memory’s stormy ocean… each story came hauntingly back to me. Serendipitous and complimentary to the dark romanticism of the stories.

 

It’s very good, if you are in the mood for something dark and creepy, yet not without virtue in the form of painful reminders of the flaws in humanity.

 

I read this for the Back tothe Classics 2022 challenge: Classic Short Story Collection and for the R.I.P.XVII challenge.

 

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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (novel #189)

The house was vile. She shivered and thought, the words coming freely into her mind, Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once.

 

The Haunting of Hill House is of course, a horror story. 

 

Or is it? It is often called a gothic horror story. I certainly agree with the gothic part, but horror? I’m not so sure. 

 

Hill House has a sinister reputation, and it comes to the attention of Dr. John Mantague, an investigator of the supernatural. He’s probably not taken very serious by his academic colleagues, and he sets out to occupy Hill House one summer to document its – peculiarities? – with the assistance of volunteers, Theodora and Eleanor, who are to take notes and be corroborating witnesses. Both have had alleged experience with the paranormal. The party is completed by Luke Sanderson, skeptic, nephew of the owner, and apparent heir to Hill House.

 

The story is told primarily from Eleanor’s perspective, which casts an uncertain light on the mysteries of Hill House. I thought Eleanor was a flake from nearly the first minute she is introduced, and not because she believes in the supernatural. As the story unfolds, I realize she isn’t just a bit flakey, she’s rather nuts, and in the end, quite mad.

 

Which makes her entire perspective unreliable. I’m certain this was Jackson’s intent. Vague sort of SPOILER ALERT ahead.

 

I’m not sure if Hill House was haunted, or if Eleanor is just mad. Or something in between. Perhaps Hill House drove her mad, or perhaps it possessed her. 

 

Is there a term for that author’s device of intentional ambiguity? Especially of the climactic ending? If there is, Jackson uses it well, coupled with her beautiful prose.

 

No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of cornice. Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil. This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

 

I wanted to love this, or at least be terrified by it…but neither. It isn’t terribly scary, and I was a bit disappointed in the ambiguous ending. It's still very much worth the read. I’ll definitely read more by Shirley Jackson.

 

And don’t take my word for it. Stephen King listed it among the finest horror novels of the late 20^thCentury, and Neil Gaiman named it as the scariest book of fiction he’d ever read. (From this I conclude Gaiman never read Ulysses.)

 

 

My rating 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

I read this for R.I.P. XVI, and The Classics Club spin #28

 

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The Collector by John Fowles (novel #188)

Having her was enough. Nothing needed doing. I just wanted to have her…

~ The Collector

 

The Collector is the debut novel of John Fowles, who is probably best known for The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The Collector is often categorized as a thriller or psychological horror, which was why I picked it for reading in October, but I don’t consider it to be either. 

 

It is the story of a disturbed and lonely young man, obsessed with a beautiful young woman. Frederick is socially awkward, lives with his aunt and cousin, and would probably just have worshipped Miranda from afar, until he wins a small fortune in “the pools”. 

 

They say that power corrupts… and that money is power… so now that he has money – power – Fredericks launches a plan to kidnap Miranda.

 

And unfortunately, he succeeds, quite affectively.

 

The novel is told in two alternating parts: Frederick’s perspective and Miranda’s in epistolary form. 

 

What she never understood was that with me it was having. Having her was enough. Nothing needed doing. I just wanted to have her, and safe at last.

 

And he stands. He’s the most tremendous stander-around I’ve ever met.

 

He’s a collector. That’s the great dead thing in him.

 

I know it’s pathetic, I know he’s a victim of a miserable Nonconformist suburban world and a miserable social class, the horrid timid copycatting genteel in-between class.

 

All those days I knew I would never love another the same. There was only Miranda for ever.

 

It was captivating - pardon the pun. Not knowing the end, I kept reading, hoping for something hopeful or heroic. Frederick never “abuses” Miranda – other than the whole denying her freedom thing – and as she gets to know him, Miranda feels sympathy, and determines to seek help and clemency for him once she is free. But in the end, the reader has nothing but a sickening fear. 

 

Had I known a bit more about this novel in advance, I wouldn’t have read it. Fowles is a talented writer, so talented that at times I felt empathy for the villain, as does Miranda. That’s not all bad; I believe every villain has a human story. Clinical study of their pathology may be useful for preventive and corrective measures, but as a form of entertainment I don’t think there’s much benefit. 

 

But for the author’s narrative and believable portrayal of two opposite and complex perspectives, I give The Collector

 

2 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

I read this for R.I.P. XVI, as some have categorized it as horror or thriller. I wouldn’t necessarily call it either, but I didn’t know that before reading it, so it stands as one of my books for this challenge. 

 

There are numerous literary references throughout The Collector. The main being, that Miranda nicknames her captor Caliban – from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where the monster Caliban is obsessed with beautiful Miranda. She also compares the two of them to Dante and Beatrice.

 

Miranda tries to “teach” Frederick about art and literature and gets him to read The Catcher in the Rye – he doesn’t like it or get it. She reads several other classic novels during her captivity.

 

"Collector" is a double entendre, as Frederick is a butterfly collector…that is before he collects Miranda. 

 

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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (novel #187)

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. ~ opening line

 

Rebecca is an early 20^thCentury Gothic novel set mostly in Cornwall England. The title character never appears in the novel, yet she is the central character; morbid, malign, and mysterious. 

 

The unnamed narrator is a 20-something lady’s companion, when she meets a wealthy English widower on holiday in Monte Carlo. After a whirlwind courtship she becomes Mrs. Maxim de Winter, the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter, and the Lady of Manderley.

 

It is the promise of gracious living, a promise quickly broken.

 

The young bride feels out of place and insecure in her new station. She feels like a pet to her worldly husband, simple and foolish to the dignified staff, and miserably intimidated by the overbearing housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.

 

But more than this, the new Mrs. de Winter learns that Manderley, its staff, and her husband are “haunted” by the late Rebecca de Winter.

 

I was just a bit disappointed in this novel, but I believe it is due more to unfairly high expectations rather than any fault in the story. For one thing I thought it was a ghost story. My mistake, but still a letdown. But more importantly, I’ve read a number of bloggers who love this book, and it just set my expectations very high. If I set aside my preconceptions, I profess the writing is quite beautiful. I felt the story was fascinating, but a bit weak on one, and only one point. I found it unrealistic how quickly and completely the narrator came to terms with her husband’s shocking revelation, and if I believe it, I am rather dismayed by her acceptance of it. 

 

Still, it was a compelling story, marvelously told. This was my first read of du Maurier; And the author’s name is fun to say.

 

My rating 3 1/2 of 5 stars

 

I read this for R.I.P. XVI, and although it wasn’t the ghost story I was expecting, it is a Gothic novel, also sort of a mystery, so it still satisfies the requirements of the challenge. 

 

Excerpts – all by the narrator:

 

I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire. 

 

I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.

 

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

 

…boredom is a pleasing antidote to fear.

 

“If only there could be an invention,” I said impulsively, “that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”

 

Rebecca, always Rebecca. I should never be rid of Rebecca.

 

I could fight the living, but I could not fight the dead.

 

I was not afraid. I would fight for Maxim. I would lie and perjure and swear, I would blaspheme and pray. Rebecca had not won. Rebecca had lost.

 

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The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson (novel #159)

The House on the Borderland is a supernatural horror novel, set in Ireland. It begins in very early 20^th Century when a pair of fishermen, discover a few scant remains of “The House” and a journal. The bulk of the novel then is the journals content, set in probably the very early 19^th Century, told by a recluse who inhabited the house.

 

The unnamed narrator buys the house for a song, owing to its mysterious and sinister legend. He lives with his spinster sister and dog Pepper. Shortly after inhabiting the house he begins to experience bizarre visions – perhaps hallucinations – but eventually, the fantastic manifestations leave unmistakable physical evidence. He is at times, transported through time and space, to the extremes of the cosmos. He encounters the spiritual presence of a long-lost love, and does battle with a herd of intelligent, but clearly malevolent swine-creatures.

 

I was looking forward to this read, as it was quite unknown to me and somewhat obscure to modern readers. I was quite disappointed. It was at times, riveting when I was scared for the narrator’s life, but overall I felt it was just a series of amazing events, leading to an amazing culmination, without a cohesive point. 

 

I give it 2 ½ of 5 stars

 

But don’t take my word for it. Smarter readers I love it, including H. P. Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett. Have you read The House on the Borderland? What did you think?

 

 

I read this for the R.I.P. XV challenge – scary reads for September and October. It also satisfied square I5: Classic Gothic or Horror 2020 Classic Bingo Challenge. 

 

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Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (novel #158)

“Three A.M. That’s our reward. Three in the morn. The Soul’s midnight. The tide goes out, the soul ebbs. And a train arrives at an hour of despair…Why?”

You might guess from the title, Something Wicked This Way Comes is a horror story. Some have called it dark fantasy, but nah…I think it’s horror. I read this once before, when I was 13, the age of the two protagonists, growing up in mid-America as they were, in the 60s, and 70s as they did. Very likely, all this empathy caused me to share their terror. I didn’t remember much of this story, but I remembered that it terrified me.

In a wonderful way.

 

The story opens on a lazy autumn afternoon, a week before Halloween, a week before inseparable friends Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade turn 14.

And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young anymore.

 

Will was born a minute before midnight, October 31, Jim a minute after.

 

But it is at 3 A.M – the soul’s midnight – on October 23^rd, nearly 14 years later when Jim and Will are beckoned by a train whistle. We’ve all heard that romantic, far off train in the night…

 

Yet this train’s whistle! The wails of a lifetime where gathered in it from the other nights in other slumbering years; the howl of moon-dreamed dogs, the seep of river-cold winds through January porch screens which stopped the blood, a thousand fire sirens weeping, or worse! the outgone shreds of breath, the protests of a billion people dead or dying, not wanting to be dead, their groans, their sighs, burst over the earth!

 

Unable to resist the call, Will and Jim climb out their windows to investigate the arrival of Coogar and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show.

 

It is subtly terrifying. I’m not frightened by grotesque monsters. It is those things supposed to be harmless: a clown – but just a little off, an old woman, appearing kindly and gentle – but perhaps a witch, or in this case, a carnival that should be wondrous – but which comes at an odd time, in the wrong season, that terrify me in a quiet unspeakable way, with their secret malevolence.

 

Even the title is subtle. It is taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a line uttered by the Weird Sisters (never expressly called witches in the play)

By the pricking of my thumbs, 

Something wicked this way comes. 

 

Besides his wonderful, subtle, terrifying words, I love Bradbury’s writing. It is romantic, poetically descriptive, mysteriously vague, brief and poignant. Such as Will’s dad, Charles Halloway, observing the boys chasing the wind in the innocence of youth…

He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.

 

I particularly love the allusion in this next line when Charles, who works in the library, marks his son, perusing its wonders…

So, looking back down the corridor, was Dad shocked to see he owned a son who visited this separate 20,000-fathoms-deep world?

 

Or this…Chapter 31 quoted in its entirety: 

Nothing much else happened, all the rest of that night.

 

Or one last excerpt, that I cannot put in context without a spoiler, but the context is not necessary to enjoy the beauty of the words describing father and son in a moment of playfulness:

He got half over Dad when they fell, rolled in the grass, all hoot-owl and donkey, all brass and cymbal as it must have been the first year of Creation, and Joy not yet thrown from the Garden.

 

And besides all this, I think there are powerful truths tucked away in the pages of this fantasy. “Be careful what you wish for” is one, but more importantly, the sometimes-fine line between evil and good. Every evil that has been invented is a perversion of some good gift of the creator; every desire in the heart of man has a righteous venue, and an indulgent aberration. I think Bradbury was warning us that evil ones will tempt us with subtle lies, just as when Joy was thrown from the garden.

 

I give it 4 of 5 stars

 

 

I read this for the R.I.P. XV challenge – scary reads for September and October.

 

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