And Come They Did - Stephen King: Fairy Tale

My choices of reading matter must seem weird from the outside. I read both Nobel, Pulitzer and Bookerprize winners and what many people consider Pulp Fiction. For example Amercian writer John D. MacDonald of whom I'd read more if there were more than his roughly 50 novels.

When I look for new books the only method that works is: start reading. After a short time I get a feel for the sound of a book. If I like the sound, I keep reading, if I don't - most of the time I stop. Off course I can be wrong and might miss a great book. But every time I think: "Let's keep reading, this could still become good!" - I stop anyway after 50 more pages. It's not about quality. It's about taste. My own, weird taste.

Because of my method I try not to read blurbs. I don't want to know what's coming. I prefer to know if I like the sound and then explore a book like a completely unchartered country. A few weeks ago I hit gold. A book with great sound (in two senses, as you will see) and with a content that kept surprising me until it was almost over. You've read it in the headline: Stephen King's "Fairy Tale" is such a book. 

Before I come to that, allow me to say a few words about Mr. King. He's without a doubt a master. One of the mostread writers of all time, likely to surpass J.K.Rowling and with a productivity that astonishes all writers who try to match him. Like many Teenagers I read some of his books already when I was 13, though I wasn't so much into "It", "Pet Cemetery" or "The Shining" like most of my peers. 

"Christine" left deep impressions on me. I could very much relate to the main character Arnie, a somewhat classical nerdy looser, who, if you care to look beyond the horrorparts, is finely drawn and very alive. "The Long Walk" is another masterpiece, written under the pseudonym Richard Bachmann. The simple formular to reduce 100 boys to one through endless walking is done in a perfection that hasn't lost its appeal to me after four readings. The few strokes with which Mr. King draws a picture of the United States as dictatorship are also state of the art writers economy - and, believe it or not - poetic as well. Another book, an early one, that I've liked immensely is "Salem's Lot", a vampire story that keeps shocking and surprising its readers to the point where ... I won't spoil here: Better read it, if you haven't already.

So: "Fairy Tale". I didn't read it, I listened to it. Having a cold and headaches I needed something to keep me entertained while resting my eyes and my tired body. So I browsed audiobooks in my local online library and found "Fairy Tale" read by Seth Numrich. What luck for me. I liked the sound of Mr. Kings writing (which isn't the case with all of his works): the book feels like the late work of someone who knows his craft to the core and doesn't have a thing left to prove to the world. His pacing is cool and immaculate: Calmly detailed and yet moving forward with tension in every sentence. I also liked Mr. Numrichs voice, his sound and his rhythm - a beat that might feel strange to some people because it halts and swings at the same time. It went right into my head and my heart. 

For me it parallels with Stephem Fry's reading of the Harry Potter books, which I enjoyed like none other so far. Mr. Fry had a way of capturing both the heart and emotional warmth and the humor of Harry Potter.

There isn't much humor in "Fairy Tale", but Mr. Numrich is so convincing as Charlie Reade and all the people that pass through the story (not to mention the animals, lead by a German shepherd named Radar, whose soul has been caught in words like hardly a dog's before him), that I wanted to follow along from word one. I didn't know anything about the story but its title and the bookcover. It is, indeed, a fairy tale and no horror story even though the master can't help himself. Lucky me for not knowing a thing. The story keeps changing. When I thought: "Ok, I know what's going on here!" I discovered, that I still had three quarters to go and a dead main charakter left plenty of space for new surprises to come. And come they did.

Sommerpause

Dieser Blog befindet sich seit einiger Zeit in der Sommerpause. Zu Teil liegt das daran, dass ich so viel Zeit draußen verbringe und zum anderen, dass die Arbeit im Moment so viel Raum einnimmt. Als Brücke hier eine Ladung Zitate aus meiner Sommerliteratur:

'Salem's Lot' (Stephen King)

The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. 

Killing Floor, Jack Reacher No.1 (Lee Child)

In the end, a government’s primary duty is to defend the value of its currency. 

Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Committment (Gay Hendricks and Kathlyn Hendricks)

We have all had so little training in how to take true responsibility for our lives that we tend to slip into projection when the slightest stress occurs.

The Stand (Stephen King)

He stopped wanting to communicate, and when that happened the thinking process itself began to rust and disintegrate.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (Robert Louis Stevenson)

But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world—all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel (Neil Gaiman)

In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside, and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, “Be whole,” and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer, because I had spoken the language of shaping. 

Tripwire, Jack Reacher No.3 (Lee Child)

The whole point of drifting was happy passive acceptance of no alternatives.