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Holly by Stephen King (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 15+ hours
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Holly by Stephen King, narrated by Justine Lupe, is a novel that will at times challenge readers because it is set during the height of the pandemic when information about the virus was minimal and many people were running scared. Holly, who is a bit of a hypochondriac, wears masks and gloves, and she’s definitely wiping down everything for germs, but she still smokes cigarettes. She is nothing but a ball of contradictions, but aren’t we all.

Finders Keepers is the private detective agency she runs with her partner, Pete, and some other helpers/researchers who will be familiar to readers of If It Bleeds and The Outsider, among others. She sets out to find a missing girl and uncovers a lot more than she bargained for.

This is probably the least creepy of King’s novels, as it deals with a real-world evil, rather than a supernatural one. Holly’s investigation of the girl’s disappearance takes her down a rabbit hole into other disappearances, but in the back of her mind is the anxiety about the pandemic, her mother’s passing, and her partner’s sickness.

Holly by Stephen King is a solid novel set in a time period many of us would probably like to forget or gloss over, but it reminds us that while we lived through it, we haven’t really dealt with the consequences of it. Some readers will bristle at the vax vs. antivax and COVID vs. non-COVID believers and all that it entails. I suggest they skip this one because they will be too focused on things that are just part of the time period for the story and less on the story and the character, Holly, herself. She navigates some big emotional traumas in this one, and I’m not sure if she’s addressed all she needs to (much like the rest of us) — she may show up again in another King novel, who knows.

RATING: Quatrain

Other Reviews:

About the Author:

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Doctor Sleep and Under the Dome, now a major TV miniseries on CBS. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller as well as the Best Hardcover Book Award from the International Thriller Writers Association. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Elevation by Stephen King

Source: Purchased
Hardcover, 160 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Elevation by Stephen King is a novella in which Scott Carey finds something strange is going on with his weight but he doesn’t want to go to a doctor or hospital to be prodded and tested.

“Not a wind, not even a high, exactly, but an elevation. A sense you had gone beyond yourself and could go farther still.” (pg. 94)

The story is relatively benign compared to some of King’s other more sinister fare, but it does raise questions about mortality and what we want to leave behind. Carey is an average, overweight, white male, in a rural touristy town reliant on outsiders for its economy for the most part, and in many ways they are cloistered from the realities of the outside communities.

Their bubble is easily burst by the up-and-coming vegan eatery run by a married gay couple, who the townsfolk consider interlopers and have not been kind to since their arrival. As one member of the town puts it, they could have just laid low and things would have been fine but one of them had to introduce the other as her wife. That was too much  “in-your-face.” While we’d love to say that this a cliche of conservatives in rural areas, it isn’t very much and it’s clear that King has seen these people in action first hand. Is his take on Deidre and Missy cliche? It just may be.

Elevation by Stephen King is a breezy read about how to leave your mark and how sometimes even good intentions can be misunderstood and often are. People who have shied away from his novels before may want to pick this up. Nothing gory, bloody, or too dangerous here, but there is a fantastical story about a man striving to be more than he has been as his condition takes control.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Doctor Sleep and Under the Dome, now a major TV miniseries on CBS. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller as well as the Best Hardcover Book Award from the International Thriller Writers Association. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those classics that defines an author.  Set during the 1920s just after WWI, Jay Gatsby is a mysterious rich man who lives on the wrong side (West Egg) of the Manhasset Bay in New York.  Nick Carraway, who narrates this tale, is like Gatsby in that he is from the middle west and comes to New York after the war to make his fortune.  Unlike Gatsby, this self-made man has not taken great pains to hide his true past.  Carraway informs the reader of how he meets Gatsby and how he comes once again into contact with his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom, who live on the right side of the bay (East Egg).  While little action goes on in the book until the end, the interactions of the characters and their reactions to one another and Gatsby are telling of how class differences remain even in the United States where you’re supposed to lift yourself up by your bootstraps.  There is a distinct disdain on the part of Carraway for opulence and excess, which had become prevalent among the upper class and bootleggers.

“‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.'” (page 5)

Carraway has his suspicions about Gatsby’s fortune, but eventually, his charisma wins him over and he goes beyond any of Gatsby’s friends in the end, demonstrating that true friendship has little to do with one’s background or wealth.  Daisy is the great love in this novel, and while readers may not see her appeal, they must remember that she is seen through the eyes of Carraway, who already has expressed a bias against the wealthy and high social class since returning from the war.  Fitzgerald has not set up a love triangle that is difficult to uncover, but the conclusion of that love triangle — really its more like a love square — is utterly tragic.

“‘Anyhow he gives large parties,’ said Jordan, changing the subject with an urban distaste for the concrete.  ‘And I like large parties.  They’re so intimate.  At small parties there isn’t any privacy.'” (page 54)

In many ways, Gatsby has romanticized his time with Daisy and he hopes to rekindle what he lost when he was shipped off to fight in WWI.  However, the question remains whether what he had with Daisy before the war was real, romanticized, or even imagined by a soldier looking for something to cling to in an effort to survive the horrors of war.  Carraway is just as enigmatic as Gatsby, and while their initial circumstances differed in terms of riches, they both pursued the American Dream of success — albeit in different ways.  These two characters are juxtaposed for a reason, and Fitzgerald leaves it up to the reader to determine why.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . And one fine morning –” (Page 189)

Fitzgerald’s writing was easy to understand, while there were moments where there were names dropped and mentioned in great paragraphs, if only to demonstrate the connectedness of the characters to high society and other “important” people.  Those moments were not necessary given the conversations Gatsby had at his parties.  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is an enduring look at a time when men and women were fully grasping at anything to improve their situation and earn their way in the world.  However, there is a blissful disenchantment with this way of life by the end of the novel that will have readers questioning their dedication to the rat race and beating out the Joneses.

 

 

This is my 11th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

 

 

This is my 5th book for the WWI Reading Challenge.