The most difficult thing before starting to write this blog was finding a suitable quote from the book that could both describe the story and provide the first impetus in my story. And yes, here it is a book in miniature – all the troubles, all the problems are from misunderstanding. Quite a relevant message, given the wave of sex scandals that have befallen us recently. But we read books Stephen King not so much for the sake of allusions to modern (and not so modern) life, but for the sake of something else. And this is "something else"we’ll sort it out now.
First, let’s look at the authorship.
We can talk a lot about Stephen King (which we will do a little further), but what do we know about his youngest son – Owen? Personally, before reading "Sleeping Beauties" I wasn’t familiar with the work of this “young” man – I didn’t even know if it existed. Many have heard about Joe Hille – the eldest son of the King couple, who has already managed to prove himself in the writing field, but Owen is rather a dark horse. A fleeting conversation with Google showed me that he does have experience in this industry – a novel, short stories, novellas, even a graphic novel! – but his bibliography cannot be compared even with the work of his brother, not to mention his father. And I don’t remember reading anything that came from his pen. And this leads to two things – I can’t say with certainty that he contributed anything significant as a co-author of this work, but when reading the book I didn’t get the feeling that someone was “pulling the blanket over themselves” (which may be familiar to people who read "Gwendy’s Box", co-written with Richard Chizmar). I can only say for sure that the second name on the cover should not serve as a reason for refusing to read this book – I have not noticed any objective reasons for this. This means that if the second author of the book was sitting mostly in the passenger seat, we need to talk about the “driver”.
The name "Stephen King" has been a household name for decades – even those who have never read his works "King of Horror" or have not seen the film adaptations (and for this you need to live under a rock, but let’s say) they know what he is famous for and why he became famous. This means that when starting to read his books, even beginners have certain expectations – the reader is ready for suspense, thriller, “race against time,” cruelty and mysticism. And regular readers who have already accepted the rules of the game return to all this purposefully.
This technique, if used correctly, can be an excellent “spice” for a short novel. Example – "Pet Sematary": when, when reading the sweetest and kindest chapter, they throw at you a phrase like: “They’re having fun, la-la-la, what a pity that the guy is about to die,” and then continue the chapter with the previous sweet presentation – that’s great. You finish reading the chapter on tenterhooks, start the next one, and then the expected “incident” happens. It evokes emotions, and the writer relieves himself of the obligation to create some kind of intrigue from this – the reader knows everything, so there is no need to delay.
But when in a seven-hundred-page novel I throw information of this type at you, but it is resolved only after 100-150 pages and you can only read it in a week – this is no longer very. Note – not bad, it just works a little differently than we would like.
But only the last books of King (and I’m talking about the trilogy "Mr. Mercedes") fail strongly in these parameters. They are either absent altogether or do not reach the level of early "classical" King. Also, the desire to play detective plays a bad joke on him: he rushes to suspense, then to thriller, then to mysticism, then to detective, which ultimately leads to the fact that everything feels secondary. That’s why I think the best book in this series is the novel “He who finds it takes it for himself” – the less global nature of the story, smoothness and down-to-earthness make the book excellent in this regard, but this does not cancel out other disadvantages. But for some reason I knew – "Sleeping Beauties" I have to like it. Perhaps they will even gain cult status among fans and others. And it’s not even about an interesting concept or collaboration with his son, who could bring a fresh vision to my father’s work. No, it’s something else.
Someone might have noticed https://onwin365casino.co.uk/ that when discussing King’s latest books, I omitted the novel "Renaissance", which came out the same year as "Mr. Mercedes". But bad luck – neither I nor anyone I know has read this book, so I don’t have my own opinion about this work, so I’ll just pretend that it came out a few months earlier :p
Oh, and I will be very grateful if someone in the comments describes “Renaissance” in a nutshell.
Thank you.
Among King’s books, the following two categories can be distinguished:
The first are intimate, drawn-out books about prison (pun intended), which are almost his most iconic works;
The latter are large-scale apocalyptic works, imbued with a sense of hopelessness (it’s hard to find a King fan who doesn’t idolize him "Confrontation").
And so we have two categories of books that Stephen King does surprisingly well on the one hand, and Sleeping Beauties on the other – a novel that combines both of these categories. I think it’s promising. But let’s take it in order, which means we’ll start with the synopsis.
Somewhere in America, somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, somewhere NOT in Maine (!sic) located a mining town Dooling. And different people lived there without grieving (although they did) – boys and girls, athletes and bullies, doctors and drug addicts, policemen and criminals. And the main attraction of this town was Dooling Women’s Prison.
And things would have gone on as usual, if one unremarkable day a strange virus had not appeared out of nowhere – Aurora. And he earned such a name because, falling asleep, women fell into the arms of Morpheus without the opportunity to wake up, and their bodies, starting from the head, began to be enveloped in a strange white cocoon. And attempts to free women from these cocoons were the worst thing that men could do in this situation – the women immediately went crazy and brutally killed anyone (except children) who tore their cocoon, after which, with a sense of fulfilled duty, they calmly went to finish their eternal sleep.
It would seem – what does Dooling have to do with it?? Why describe such a global catastrophe using the example of one small town, especially considering that King already has experience in writing large-scale apocalyptic works?? And there is a reason – it is here, at the Dooling Women’s Prison, that Aurora arrives on the first day Evie Black – the only woman who can fall asleep and wake up. Was she the cause or the primary source of what was happening?? Can she wake up women? And if it can, then at what cost?? These are the questions this novel tries to answer.
First of all, before I get carried away into analytics, I would like to note the originality of the idea: women who, when falling asleep, are packed into cocoons – this is interesting. And if we also take into account the fact that every 100-150 pages the Kings throw in some other elements and features that I cannot describe here (because there are spoilers), then in general the idea is fresh and unhackneyed. Let’s move on.
What King has always been able to do is describe the ordinary life of ordinary people, and subsequently its destruction. It was this aspect of his work that “brought out” for me, IMHO, his worst novel – "Salem’s Lot". It’s not that “Sleeping Beauties” needs to “take out” something, but still this aspect works perfectly here. Description of the work of a local sheriff, who, in addition to performing her direct duties, must somehow keep herself conscious, and this after a night shift; the daily routine of the prison psychologist and prison staff in general; everyday life of journalists in a not-so-everyday situation; family drama – all this makes you feel some kind of comfort in the vastness of the pages of the novel, which creates a significant contrast with how things will go further. A definite plus.
But with charismatic characters, for which King is also famous, it’s a little more complicated. No, the heroes here are not cardboard, they don’t have the “one-childhood-trauma-that-shaped-their-character” problem and so on. But…Which of the heroes will I remember for a long time?? Well, Frank With Clint, who were blown to opposite sides of the barricades. Maybe an amphetamine drug addict, who appears often, moves the plot, and really helps the characters. Well, and a couple more characters. But just before you can start reading the book, you will be offered THREE character listing pages. And I didn’t remember 80% of them. More than once or twice, when reading a book, there were cases when I simply did not understand what kind of character this was and only hoped that now the characters would remember some previous memorable scene, and I would say this: "A! This is Henry! The same Henry who 150 pages ago tried to buy a joint in the supermarket and who will never appear in the story again!». But okay, if it was a problem of just minor, minor characters. No.
About 100 pages before the ending, one character commits suicide. And only 5-10 pages before the end of the book (I’m not kidding), when they said one memorable detail about him, I realized who he was. And this is a character who often flashes on the pages of the book; even some chapters are narrated from his perspective. I understand that it is impossible to make all the characters unique and memorable, especially in such a large work. But there is “Confrontation” – I still remember a silent Nila, whose traveling companion was a tall fool who didn’t even know how to read (Oh, my dears, I remember, yes). I remember Larry, who fell into the mouth of the apocalypse almost straight from the recording studio.
Do I remember anyone from Sleeping Beauties?? Definitely.
Whether I want to remember them is a completely different question.
Everything is not so simple with the way the plot is presented, or as it is fashionable now to say – with Pacing.
At one fine moment, the events taking place in the morning, um… well, at noon on the first day of the Aurora they very clearly jump into the evening. I’m not saying that this happened in two pages, but the events were in no way tied to any time markers, which creates a certain chronological chaos. And then history generally jumps forward two or three days without a declaration of war, simply confronting us with the fact of the events taking place. But.
As soon as all these wobbles, wobbles, carousels stop, an excellent plot presentation awaits us – everything is measured, all events are tied to a certain time or, more often, to other events, different storylines not only do not conflict, but also complement each other – Lyapota!
Also, one cannot help but say a few words about local conflicts. There are so many of them here that even identifying one main conflict is difficult for me, which is understandable for such a large novel. I won’t even try to describe them briefly, otherwise I’ll take up half the volume of the book (and so it’s time to wrap it up). I will only say that they are all logical (at least for the most part), they are not taken out of thin air – they can all be traced back to some zero event, and the way two important plot conflicts also conflict with each other (pun not intended), justifying the quote from the beginning of this blog – it’s just an extravaganza of emotions!
And finally, a few words about the plot. An interesting plot, a large number of characters and a fairly limited territory in which the events take place do not allow the plot to slow down, sag and be distracted from important events. Except perhaps for that moment with a skip of several days, but there is more likely not a subsidence, but a gap – you read about one thing, and then boom! and it’s completely different and he’s like: “Whoa-whoa, cowboy, take it easy!». But you quickly get into the swing of things, and such problems no longer appear. The plot itself is adequate and, I would even say, quite pleasant – I will definitely remember the feeling of catharsis in the finale for a long time.
In the end, I would just like to briefly note that King Sr. and King Jr. wrote, although not a standard, but well-tailored, pleasantly written story with a bittersweet taste of a happy ending and a simple feeling of completion and satisfaction after reading. This is a book that is difficult to regret reading – I definitely recommend this Amazing novel.
It is also worth noting that the book does not yet have an official Russian translation (but there is a fan translation), so if my text has aroused your interest in this book and you love printed materials, then set aside a few shekels for July-August – the release is scheduled for around this time.
