Review of 11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63

by Stephen King

*possible spoilers*

I've recently read a string of mediocre novels and put out a call for something to really enjoy. I was recommended 11/22/63 bu Stephen King. I approached it with apprehension. There are a number of things about this book that would have stopped me from picking it up on my own. It's historical fiction, which I generally find dull. It's first person which I see as an over used style to let the author feign the depth of a main character by making everything seem more immediate and intense. And it's by Stephen King.

I don't think I've read king since I was maybe 14 at the latest and when I did it was to put me to sleep. I have always found him heavy handed, long winded, nostalgic to the point of laughable, and formulaic. I was willing to give him a second chance and was told that this was the novel to win me over.

It wasn't.

The basic story is that a man steps through a literal door in time that takes him back to the late 50s and he plans on using this to stop the Kennedy assassination. See the title? Good. And from that I was actually interested. I put aside my reservations and plowed through this thing. And I was surprised that the Kennedy story was actually pretty darned good. But there's a problem.

The problem is that Stephen King gets in the way of the story. Literally. The entire first act of this tome is a complete waste where King sets the main character up to be himself. He goes to a small town that has a general sense of foreboding, finds that something possible magical and definitely evil is driving people to victimize children. He encounters friends that have some sort of magical power. There are comments about a clown that lives in the sewers and kills the kids. It is literally all stuff that we've seen before.

This town becomes the cover story the time traveler uses. He presents himself as a writer who is penning IT. Then the book focuses on a romance starting with the next act. I suppose it's necessary as he has no actual motivation for going into the past other than a diner cook tells him that stopping the assassination would make the future a much nicer place. With the romance he now has a reason to spend years hiding out until the trip to Dallas. But this romance gets in the way of both his mission and the furthering of the story. He splits his time between his girlfriend and his mission and therefore the narrative gets watered down as well. He's not a compelling person (he's King's avatar) and spends more than half his time trying to make a life for himself in the past.

I got bored waiting for the author and the main character to get back to their mission. Eventually they do but, thanks to King's need to make his settings vaguely sinister, time itself sends car accidents and unfortunate minutiae to thwart his attempts to change things. Maybe it's because I've read science fiction before but I found this turn a trite one to add drama and conflict where there was none. I won't say what the outcome of his rescue attempt is but I will say this: after the climax there's a halfhearted attempt to show a bigger picture that fails terribly. It comes far to late and doesn't hold up without further explanation. Which never comes. Instead there's a wistful, and essentially pointless, denouement. Perhaps it would have been a more satisfying  ending if I had picked up what I thought was to be a romance centered novel but I didn't. I was sold and signed up for a time travel/historical story. It's like going to see Back to the Future Part 2 and instead seeing a showing of Somewhere in Time.

On a scale of -5 to +5 stars 11/22/63 gets -2.

I would have given it a -1 but I was interested in the Kennedy plot so I was really bothered when King failed to deliver on it.