11/22/63

11/22/63 by Stephen King
Time Travel
Jake Epping is a thirty-five year-old school teacher in Maine. His friend Al, who owns a small diner, tells Jake that the storeroom of his diner contains a portal to the past-- to September, 1958. Al says that he's spent the last four years living back in the late 1950's and early '60s in an effort to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Al has a fatal disease now and asks Jake to use the portal to take his place and stop the assassination.   Al believes that maybe the Vietnam War may never occur and lots of good will come from this action.

Jake willingly complies and does a test travel where he is able to kill one of his students' father before the father kills everyone else in the family.   He comes back to plan with the help of Al's notes and return to 1958 which resets actions.  Jake must again kill his student's father and live for the remaining 4 years planning his actions to counter the assassination.  

King does a masterful job of setting the scenes with obvious research.  Were there conspiracies?  Where the book falls short is that Jake was a non-descript person going through the motions of life and all of a sudden is the big hero.   He is able to murder with no qualms and seems to handle all the ugliness of the situation having had no prior experience at all.  I did enjoy Jake going through the ordinary life of the early 60s.  I particularly enjoyed King's take on what would happen if we were able to change past events.

Rating:
(4.0/5)

11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63 by Stephen King
Thriller?

Jake Epping leads a boring life in 2011. As he finishes grading papers of his English class in 2011, he remembers reading Harry Dunning's story on how his father killed his entire family and almost him when he was a child, leaving Harry with a permanent limp. Jake is interrupted by friend and diner owner Al who sounds very sick. Jake drives over to the diner and Al looks years older than he did yesterday. Al wants to share his secret with Jake, as he's learned he has cancer: there's a rabbit hole in the diner's cellar that leads back to September 9, 1958.

Jake walks through the rabbit hole and visits 1958 for a short period of time, just to get a root beer. Everyone seems friendlier and the food tastes better. Back in 2011 he learns that every time he goes through the hole, he's back at September 9, 1958. Time re-sets each visit. Al tells Jake his intentions were to go through the rabbit hole and wait for four years until the assassination of JFK so he could put a stop to it. He thoroughly researched Lee Harvey Oswald but couldn't finish his quest, or even determine if Oswald was the only shooter before he got too sick. Jake must go through the hole for Al and see if he can carry through this quest.

The past, however, does not like to be changed. It will throw everything at you to try and stop you from changing the past. Jake also notices how there are harmonies in the past. If he stops one thing from happening, it may happen somewhere else. This concept and the butterfly effect makes this book particularly interesting.

Surprisingly, this 800-pager is the very first Stephen King book I've ever read. I've never been a big fan of horror books but this is far from it. It's a cross between historical fiction, thriller, and science fiction. I've always had this preconceived notion that because King churns out so many novels that his writing wouldn't be very good, but that's not the case.

The characters in this book are near-perfect. Jake Epping is boring enough that you can relate to him but not so boring that he isn't interesting. He steps up when he needs to but in a way that you could picture yourself doing so. The other gems in this novel are the harmonies created in the past. People he meets are named the similarly, he sees his car twice, etc. This obviously took a lot of planning on King's part and it was executed very well.

Despite the high praise, there were some small issues that nagged at me. The first was why a restaurant owner would go to Jake with this information. They weren't close friends but rather almost acquaintances. Not the type of person I would share this information with. The second was when Epping noticed the harmony between Sadie (his girlfriend in the 60s) and the mother of Harry Dunning. I felt like I had missed a crucial piece of the plot when I read this part and actually had to re-read it a few times. I ended up searching the internet and seeing that other people had the same problem. I think King dropped the ball on this part.

The ending felt a little rushed, however it was really the only ending this book could have and I felt satisfied. This has been one of my better reads of the year.

First Line: "I have never been what you’d call a crying man."

Rating:
(4.5/5)