History, sci-fi, thriller, romance - This novel has it all! A longer review for a lengthy book.
Summary:
English teacher Jake Epping finds himself caught up in the web of history. After a random call from Al, the local diner owner, Jake arrives at the restaurant to find that Al has aged years in a matter of hours. More than that, Al is dying of cancer seemingly overnight. But what is overnight for Jake was much longer as the pantry of Al’s Diner holds a portal through time. Al has been traveling back to September of 1958 in the hopes of stopping the JFK assassination six years later. But with his grave illness, it’s now up to Jake. But the past is resistent to change and has a few tricks up its sleeve.
Verdict: 8.5/10
My first taste of Stephen King, and it’s jam-packed with emotion and action. Not necessarily with a murder every chapter but with this feeling of suspense and dread, like being chased while you're chasing someone else.
The length was initially daunting. Jake has to live through six years before you get to "the main event" so I thought it would be 900 pages of filler. I was so wrong. Instead of just filling the time in between events, King creates a whole life for Jake in 1958. You see the lives he tries to change along the way and the relationships he finds for himself.
I shouldn’t care about a Texas high school football player starring in Of Mice and Men, but King makes each individual's story personal and vital to Jake and the reader. I didn’t care if certain storylines had nothing to do with the grand scheme of Kennedy and Oswald - I was completely enthralled with the characters and their lives. And it helps that some repetitive parts King skips through because “you already knew that.” I wish we could skip the Oswald family disfunction or spousal abuse as those parts are hard to read but again are necessary to the story and sadly part of the historical case.
The novelt is far from hum-drum, even without the time travel. There are multiple murders for Jake to stop besides JFK’s. And when time is against you, dangerous characters are seeking out Jake and those he loves at every turn. But none of it seemed like it was solely included for shock factor. Every detail had a purpose and every action Jake takes has consequences, both good and bad.
I will say King didn’t take a lot of time to explain the ins and outs of time travel or alternate timelines. And with this complex of a concept, I felt like I should have been taking notes. He recaps enough throughout the novel that you get the basics, but I really wanted to hear more about the Yellow Card Man and how that fit into the world. But maybe that’s for a different book.
I really appreciate how all of King’s books are connected. Each event that Jake experiences ties together in time of course, but King’s other stories play a part too. Part of why it's taken me this long to read Stephen King is that I was never sure where to start. This was a good jumping-in point. While I didn’t quite understand all the cameos, they added to the vastness of the story and the sense of Jake being just a small piece in the game.
King has a way of immersing the reader in history, not just recounting events but showcasing attitude of the era. You experience Jake’s nostalgia for all the preferrable things of the past (I know I’m especially nostalgic for the prices). But as lovely as King paints the past, he also takes moments to remind the readers it wasn’t all rosy. Hatred was running rampant in the South and the culture was especially misogynistic. Paired side by side with horrific violence and a dreadful force always lurking nearby, it makes for quite the story.
And it was fascinating to imagine the alternative futures with and without Kennedy. Without spoiling anything, King must have done a lot of research to think through the most likely next outcome to each decision. And as Jake learns fixing one thing doesn't always fix a life in the long run. And the twist towards the end was so clever. Again, no spoilers, but King came up with the one thing that could potentially stop a time traveler, and it was so frustratingly great!
It may seem like a bizarre criticism as the book is already so long, but the ending and explanation felt rushed. There's a lot of questions that I'd like answered and character arcs that I want conclusion to. I know that's part of the point, time always has loose threads, but it wasn't my favorite type of ending. Regardless, the journey was a thrill.
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