Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King . I saw its film adaptation a few years ago, so it's to King's credit that I still managed to sit through the 6+ hour audio in one afternoon. That isn't to say the story was impossible to put down - I have no doubt that if I'd actually had anything to do on a lazy Sunday, I could have set it aside with ease - but as I didn't, it made for a pleasant enough companion. Here there be spoilers. Towards the end of the tale, it transpires that the author, Mort Rainey, and the stranger, John Shooter, are one and the same. Haunted by his past plagiarism of a classmate's story, and spurred into a nervous breakdown by his wife's infidelity, Mort develops a second personality who wreaks mayhem while he . I thought the build- up was quite clever in the beginning, particularly the delicious early line: .
He looks like a character out of a novel by William Faulkner. Of course, having seen the film I knew what to look out for, but I appreciated little clues, such as Mort napping a lot through the day but still getting a full night's sleep. Towards the end, it became considerably less subtle in a great rush. Suddenly, Mort remembers having committed plagiarism shortly after leaving college, and his wife casually mentions him having had a nervous breakdown some months earlier. I think more foreshadowing of these events would have been beneficial, because it felt like a giant, clumsy infodump setting up the final act. Still, to its credit, the tiny bits and pieces that finally clicked together for Mort to realise the truth had by- passed me entirely - his car running low on gas and his window screen being covered with dead bugs after driving like a madman to burn his wife's house down. That definitely inspired a pleasant light bulb moment. I wasn't particularly enamoured with the ending. The film closes with Mort murdering his wife, and growing corn over the spot where he buries her, mirroring the plot of the story Shooter accuses him of stealing. In the book, Mort is shot before he can kill his wife, and though he dies, she later receives a message from Shooter, indicating that Mort believed his own invention so thoroughly that the character actually came to life. It felt like listening to an every day horror story for six hours, only to be told in the last five minutes, . Better than fair, but a distance from being very good. Secret Window, Secret Garden (en espa Ayer termine de leer “ventana secreta. The audio itself was fine. It utilized backing music to build tension quite often, a technique I'm not particularly keen on - if a piece is tense, the writing alone should be able to convey that, without listener manipulation - but it was generally much less intrusive than in the preceding novella, The Langoliers. When it comes right down to it, I preferred the film adaptation, but the book is by no means bad. According to King, he came by the plot when considering his novel The Dark Half. It's been on my 'to read' list for a while now, and in light of this novella, I think I'll bump it up a few places. Stephen King La niebla T.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |