on
3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 4/5
Pages: 179
Started: 16 May 2023
Finished: 20 May 2023
Summary:
Gordie, an aspiring author, and several of his friends go on an adventure through the Florida woods to see the dead body of a young boy, but run into some unexpected trouble on the way.
Thoughts:
I was not expecting to like like this story as much as I did. I thought it was going to be a bit childish, which it was, but in the most impressive way possible. The narration felt like that of a twelve-year-old boy, but it also had a lot of insight from Gordie's (King's) adult self, which was a fascinating combination. Despite the book not being a horror novel, King's talent at creating visceral came through. The pie-eating competition scene was a bit gory and horrific, but all the details in the book felt very physical and very real.
I did not love the turn-of-phrase in The Shining, or at least did not notice it being particularly eloquent, but the writing in this book was so pretty. Not flowery, but eloquent and specific and perfect. The emotions King captured in the book were incredible. My favorite scene was the one where Chris told Gordie that his friends would just drag him down; the brotherly love and care was both boyish and very poignant, which is a hard combination, but King got it perfectly. I am definitely going to read more of his novels in the future, hopefully paying more attention to how gorgeous his writing is.
Quotes:
"That was the Fabled Automatic, the same way not inviting your Catholic friends home to dinner on Friday unless you'd checked first to make sure you weren't having meat was the Fabled Automatic" (109).
"Seeing that outrider of twilight made me feel sad and calm at the same time, brave but not really brave, comfortably lonely" (114).
"I saw--or thought I saw--something white and shapeess steal through the trees, like a grotesquely ambulatory bedsheet" (119).