2011 Reading List: 11/22/63: A Novel
11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King
November 11 – November 24
( 5 stars)
When I read the last page of this book, the next thing I did was Tweet the following:
Just finished Stephen King’s “11/22/63″. Utterly and completely fantastic! Instantly added to my top ten books all-time.
I’m sure that many will think that I’m exaggerating, but let me assure you that is not the case.
It should be known that I am (or once was) an avid Stephen King fan. I’ve found much of his stuff from the last 10 – 15 years to bear only a shadowy resemblance to the novels that I loved as a young man. I’ve read The Stand, It, and The Dark Tower Series, multiple times each and got thorough enjoyment from books like Pet Semetary, Needful Things, Insomnia, and others. Many other writings of his since the early to mid 90′s have been less entrancing. 11/22/63 may just bring me back into the fold as a full blown King fan. I am also a fan of stories involving time travel. Maybe having been a a part of the Back to the Future generation has something to do with it, but time travel has always been a plot line that could draw me – much the same way that vampires draw some other readers.
That analogy goes even further because 11/22/63 is to time travel fiction what Twilight is to the vampire genre. When Twilight was still only in novel form and receiving lots of hype, I can remember thinking that the whole blood suck think had been done a whole lot. Even King use the concept in his early hit ‘Salem’s Lot. I could help but think that it was over done. But the truth was that Stephanie Meyer’s take on vampires was, in several ways, brand new. The most surprising was the idea that vampires are not harmed by the sun, but sparkle when hit with sunlight. I little corny, but mostly just brilliant. King has reinvented the concept of time travel in a way that can’t help but make you think of Meyer.
First of all, you will find no keypads to punch in a date like in the Marty and Doc Brown tale. Nor will you find some unidentified force that drops helpless time travelers off at a point in time where they are most needed – ala Quantum Leap. King’s version of the ultimate commute is, in my experience, brand new. Masny of the same question pop up during the story – concepts like space-time continuum, the effect of changing the past, even whether the past can be changed at all. These and other issues are dealt with, some in familiar and tried ways, but some in wholly unexpected ways.
As with most King novels, there are items that faithful readers will find familiar. There are visits to places and people who we have met before in other novels. There is a liberal smattering of musical references, and don’t forget the way (lately) the life changing experience that King had when stuck by a car back in 1999 manage to creep into some of his characters and plots. Don’t get the idea that this book is an anyway recycled material – at least not in the way you think. It’s time travel, after all. There is a lot of “redoing” but I promise you’re going to love it.
This book has everything that I love in a novel. There are the historical references surrounding the late 50′s and early 60′s. There are the characters that are not only engaging and likable, but so fantastically human that when the book is over you miss them like a friend who has moved away. Thrown in the edge-of-your-seat dramatic twists and the genius plotting and you’re hitting the nail on the head. And, as icing on the cake (for me at least) and ending that was in a word: Perfect.
I did not lie in the Tweet. This book is instantly in my top 10 list of novels read (which, you might have guessed, has about four spots filled with Stephen King’s works, and that’s if you count The Dark Tower as one, huge entry.) This year I have been involved in my personal reading challenge and, as a result, 11/22/63 the the 42nd book I have read this year. It is, by far, the best of those 42 books.
And to add a little corny cliche of my own… Run, don’t walk, to get a copy of this book for yourself.
Today.
Now.
What are you waiting for? GO!
