For the last several years, I have been reading everything out of the gate by Stephen King. His books come out in the Fall, so I set aside some space in my reading list to devour whatever is released as quickly as I can. This year was no different with the publishing of his fifth book about his character Holly Gibney. In the meantime, while I waited for the book to hit my shelf, I spent some time and brought myself up to shine by reading the other books featuring Holly, a character King has admitted fascinates him.
I was first introduced to Holly in The Outsider(2018), a terrifyingly graphic book about a creature that replicates the form of an otherwise innocent person (an offspring of the monster IT?), kills and then feasts off the fear and dread when that person is caught and blamed. But Holly figures out that alibis matter and she isn't stopped in her investigation by silly things like natural laws.
The next out, featuring Ms. Gibney, is If It Bleeds (2020), a series of shorter novels (novellas?) in one of which, once again, Holly meets another creature like the one above, only this time it intends to feed by blowing up a school. Neither of these stories are her debut, and because I'm a stubborn reader, I didn't actually read the Mr. Mercedes or, Bill Hodges trilogy (2014-2016) until this year in anticipation for King's latest novel. While I won't say that these three books are my most favorite of his works, they are no less readable. The first two adhere nicely to the firmly grounded crime novel style that King—well-known as a (or, perhaps the) master of horror—excels at. However, the third book in the series swings hard into the supernatural. Though it is my least favorite book featuring Holly Gibney, it nevertheless brings me up to scratch regarding the city, supporting characters, storylines and plot points necessary to really enjoy King's latest outing, Holly.
Briefly, the eponymous book tells the tale of several unexplained disappearances around a small, well-to-do neighborhood in Holly's town. It begins by describing how the local college's author-in-residence is lured to help an elderly couple load a wheelchair into the back of a van with a ramp on it. He does help the people, both of whom taught at the same college, only to find that they aren't helpless at all, merely setting a trap for him.
Several more disappearances occur as the novel progresses and Holly's investigation firm, Finders Keepers, a gift from the late Bill Hodges, becomes involved when a twenty-something girl, thought to be a runaway, disappears, but leaves several clues at the scene of her disappearance that lean hard toward an abduction.
Holly soon suspects that the cheery elderly couple are more than just aging college professors. There is something sinister in their basement and if she's not cautious she might find herself their next victim.
King is at his best when he's writing about the worst of humanity, and whether they are supernatural evil beings or part-humans merely adds to the spicy horror of his tales. I appreciate when he can make his stories adhere to reality, though, as in Holly. Although Holly has had some exposure to the supernatural in previous tales, her experiences only add to her savvy as an investigator.
King sets this story in the heart of the pandemic, and as the book opens, Holly is logging out of her mother's Zoom funeral. Her mother decided the virus was no more than a hoax and refused the vaccines. Left to pick up the pieces of her unhappy relationship with her overbearing parent and move on as a free person, she discovers that her mother had lied to her and money that Charlotte Gibney had inherited from siblings had not been stolen at all (as she told Holly), but merely taken from Holly in hopes that she would lose Finders Keepers investigation firm and come back home for good.
Timid, brow-beaten, struck with terrible OCD when we first meet her in Mr. Mercedes. Holly's life experiences since then have molded her into something readers familiar with the character will only partially recognize in this latest book. She's always been fearless and brilliant, traits that Bill Hodges noticed immediately. Now she's free and able to make her own decisions. The lies her mother told her to keep Holly under control have been revealed. She is no longer guilted and belittled. Though the plot of the book retains one more challenge for Holly, the formerly scared woman is gone and replaced by a formidable investigator, determined to get to the bottom of a series of agonizing disappearances.
Stephen King, as usual, doesn't pull punches. He captures the desperation and anger of the pandemic, eloquently describing how the virus caught Americans wrong-footed and further polarized an already badly bifurcated culture. He describes the tribal forces of pro Trump ideology and anti-vaccination idiocy brilliantly, but he does it objectively, revealing the reality of that terrifying era without too much preaching. Fans of the former president and anti-vaxxers will shriek (if they can get a deep enough breath), but King has suggested that he doesn’t really care.
Holly, the character, is a bit of a rarity in King's work. Many of his novels are standalones, featuring a set of characters that don’t really show up in other books (there is a connectivity in his stories, as a whole, generally, however). He has a handful of characters that show up across a series of books, but few are as compelling and richly written as she is. Only Danny Torrance (The Shining, Doctor Sleep) Eddie and Susannah Dean, Roland Deschain (The Dark Tower series) and Randal Flagg (shows up across several books) wind up being as engaging. Even so, among them only Roland takes on the kind of three-dimensionality that King offers us with Holly.
My only complaint about the book is tricky. Even though he is one of my beloved authors, King does have a propensity to harm children in his tales. Out of all five books in which Holly is featured, four of them relate violence of some kind to young people. His own response to this has been that, in horror novels, what could be more horrible than monsters that devour children? However, it feels a bit overdone. In the book Holly, King's tendency to harm kids is more rounded, but no less present. One of the victims is a younger teen. It is my least favorite part of any of his novels and remains true for the book, Holly.
Holly is a great book, though, generally and if you've been keeping up with her character or not, you'll find he does a really good job of building the backstory without blunderingly rehashing old plots or briefly summarizing the previous books. Also, unlike some modern popular authors who use the same main character in all their books (I'm looking at you, Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Brad Thor, et. al.) only changing the setting enough to add incredulity to the host of other formulaic and tropey storyline techniques, King's Holly is a good stand-alone novel and you won't feel pressured to read the other books. Nothing is more off-putting to this Librarian/Reader than when one feels compelled to read books 1 through 14 in order to understand what happens in the latest novel.
Regular King readers and new readers alike will enjoy Holly because it is a good, thorough story with engaging characters, bright, straight-forward prose, and the easy readable rhythm of an author who is an old hand at his trade. The bad guys are no less irresistible than the good guys and readers may find that the parts of the book devoted to the evil old couple are the parts that drive the whole story. In fact, if his previous works are of any proof, after reading Holly, you will likely gaze at older couples not with admiration so much as a deep and palpable dread. Certainly, you will think twice before accepting a dinner invitation from the dear little oldsters down the street...
No comments:
Post a Comment