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Late last night I finished reading my first book of the year: Stephen King’s 11/22/63. As perhaps my favorite author, King tackles a story that he had originally started in the 1970′s focusing on the Kennedy Assassination that took place on (you guessed it) November 22, 1963.
Premise: Jake Epping is a school teacher from 2011 who is shown a “time bubble” in the back of an old diner owned by his friend, Al. According to Al, this portal allows anyone to travel back in time to September, 1958 near an old mill in Derry, Maine. In the spirit of all great time-travel novels, Jake learns throughout the book that anything he does in the past has consequences that will effect the future via a phenomenon called “the Butterfly Effect”. Jake agrees to go back in time in an effort to stop perhaps the most historically-terrible tragedy in American history other than 9/11: the assassination of John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald. What Epping learns along the way about life, love, and why bad things happen is the true message of the story and makes this effort one of King’s best ever.
Pros: The story itself is engaging, incredibly detailed, and not at all what you would suspect from an offering by King. There is no horror, there are no creatures, and there is nothing that makes you want to sleep with the lights on at night. In fact, King admits that this novel was a new experience for him to write due to the large amounts of research needed to accurately portray “real life” characters from the past and to pinpoint exact details from the actions of these characters in history. To this extent, King has succeeded admirably in a project that was undoubtedly outside of his comfort zone. (Note: For King-nerds like me, the subtle references to Pennywise from IT during the first few chapters was fantastic.) The story itself was a page-turner, the ending was fantastic, and the reader is left with a level of satisfaction much greater than just being happy to have finished an 800-page novel.
Cons: While the ultimate ending was great, it seemed a bit predictable and even a little rushed towards the end of the story. Furthermore, the events that take place on the actual day of the assassination were somewhat jumbled and at times seemed like King was confused as to how he can move from one idea to the next. This is understandable, of course, since King was literally rewriting a historical event that any American should already know in great detail. Finally, the explanation of why the time portal exists is barely addressed and instead left up to the reader to simply accept (or excuse) as just another element of the story. I would have liked more attention paid to that little detail.
Final Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. Not my favorite book by King, but definitely in the team photo. Despite chapters that seemed to drag on a bit long at times, the overall effort was fantastic and intelligently well done.
Lesson Learned: There is a reason why people cannot change the past. If you pay attention to life and believe in the ultimate good, you will understand that ugly events in the past allow for great times in the future.
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