Krishna
My God, is there no end to the varied stories Stephen King can write and make interesting? We have reviewed many of the author’s books here. See Under The Dome and Revival for but just two examples. This one is about time travel and is fascinating to read.
The narrator Jake Epping, a teacher, does not feel emotion enough to cry for anything and his wife Christy leaves him citing that reason. He reads a heartrending assignment from an ESL student called Hoptoad Harry or Harry Dunnings really, who limps (hence the nickname) and was a victim of a mass violence in his young age. He meets Harry’s graduation.
There is subtle humour, as in some of his best books, like the bar owner Al Templeton considering himself a good “Catlick” When Al Templeton uncharacteristically calls him to come and see him immediately, Jake does not know what he is getting into. Al is thinner and older than he should be, given that Jake had just seen him the previous day.
He goes into a corner room that seems to be too small for him to stand straight but when he goes in, he feels steps that are not there. After several disorienting moments, he climbs down the stairs, and finds himself in the past. He is outside in sunshine and the whole world has changed.
He goes and comes back dazed and finds that every time he goes, he goes to the same time, and no one else out there has any memory of him and the same events happen again and again like Groundhog Day (the movie) and that the only way he can change the dialog is if he asks something else the next time.
Al says that you can go and change things, and given the time he goes in, the best is to attempt to thwart the assassination of JFK. Al talks about meeting Oswald close up where he tormented his absolutely gorgeous wife and was generally a bully.
He explains how he saved a girl from an existence in wheelchair by averting the shooting accident and also it is interesting to see how, every time you go down the portal, it is a total reset.
Jake wants to try to save Hoptoad Harry from the accident that befell his family as an experiment before he agrees to go change history. He goes down the portal with fake ID and cards and cash.
The description of the difference between 2005 America and 1958 America are really interesting. The storytelling power of Stephen King, which never ceases to amaze me, really shows here.
He goes and tracks the father Dunning, whom he finds with difficulty, befriending two youngsters dancing. He goes to the supermarket and finds that Frank is a charming man and a butcher. He follows him to his rented apartment.
When he tries to plan his attack on Frank and bivouacs outside the Dunning house on Halloween, he is surprised by Duffy who, it turns out, had his sister married to Frank and suspects him of having murdered her and covered it up. He manages to outwit him and due to this, is late to the rescue and sees the wife’s hand crushed and one of the kids dead. He manages to save the others but gets scalped in the process and rescued by Duffy.
He returns and checks the altered history. No Hoptoad Harry in the school as a janitor anymore. But when he reaches her sister after a long search, he learns that Harry was killed in Vietnam after enlisting in the army. Back he goes again, and this time takes care of Dunning by shooting him before he even gets a chance to go to his family to kill. Then he goes to save a crippled girl from accidental shooting.
He does it by having the husband teach him a card game. And then he goes to Dallas. Here, for a bit, the story sags. He gets involved in a school play and brings out the best in kids.
He falls in love with Sadie, a new teacher who is still finalizing her divorce with a bad man. When the man disfigures Sadie and is killed by him, he misses seeing Lee take a potshot at General Walker and miss. He then tells partially the truth to Sadie and takes her to a boxing match to prove his predictions. The story sags with details of who did what before Kennedy assassination but if you are bored, plough through it. It is only a small but and even there you have interesting bits like the the parallel story of Sadie, and the relationship between her and Jake. It gets better and better and towards the end, it is truly gripping.
His betting habits catch up with him when he is caught at his home alone by thugs hired by the betting Mafia. He loses his memory and as Kennedy visit nears, the tension ratchets up with his struggle to even remember what he had to do. Nice. His car breaks down and he narrowly avoids getting killed. Then a big accident in a bus and he survives.
They hijack an old car and proceed. He just manages to thwart Oswald but in the melee Sadie gets hit and dies. He goes back to reset everything when he meets the ‘green card man’. That explanation is just amazing. That part makes up partly for all the saggy bits of the story. In fact you realize that the story is not about Kennedy at all.
From there the entire story and his struggle to do the ‘right thing’ and the sacrifice he has to make for it, and the ending are all top class. Just for the saggy bits, I am going to reduce the rating to a 7/10
– – Krishna