So... This is not one of my favorite King books. The first time I ever read it, I did so without realizing that it was a collection of inter-related short stories, and not having read The Dark Tower series (though, Ted wouldn't have made an appearance in that series way back when anyway, so...), but either way - it didn't really do much for me. On subsequent reads, the confusion regarding the format is not there, but the stories just don't really grab me like I want them to, and how I'm used to King's stories grabbing me. I will say that they are much better appreciated by me now, at the age I am, and with the experience I now have, than it was when I first read it as a teen. The first story is by far my favorite, and the one I always think of when I think of this book. It's the one that speaks to me the most out of the whole collection. I love Ted Brautigan's character, and seeing him in his little "vacation" to Connecticut is always interesting - but definitely more so now that I know where, and to what, he's taken by the Low Men in the yellow coats. I like Ted's interaction with Bobby, and I like the way that the story kind of feels like a nightmare that's just getting going - shifting between confusion and horror (Liz's experience, the Low Men, etc), and normal summer reality for an 11 year old. I also really liked Bobby, and I both liked, and pitied, the way he lost some of his innocence that summer. He stopped seeing the world through a child's eyes, and as a result, his whole life shifted. His relationship with his mother became a wary tightrope walk, when before it was simply Liz Rules The Roost. Now Bobby has an understanding of things... and though he still needs her, and loves her in his way, he doesn't like her much, and certainly doesn't respect her. And she knows it. I do pity Liz, though... to a point. She's raising a son on her own in a world where women are tolerated in the workplace - allowed to get men their coffee, and answer the phones, and they better not complain if there's a little bit of a roaming eye or hand from the boss... not if she wants to keep her job, that is. I am sure it was hard. But my grandmother did it... and she had six kids to raise on her own. That woman made miracle dinners from canned peas, butter, and crackers. She made it work, and so, while I do appreciate that Liz was in a hard spot and I could understand her miserly ways - I could only feel sorry for her to a point. And then she completely ruined any pity that I had for her by being... well, Liz. She's judgmental, hypocritical, manipulative, greedy, and cruel. She jumps to conclusions, and doesn't care if she's wrong, and her fear and anger lead her to make decisions that she should regret... but probably doesn't. She's too selfish to regret on anyone else's behalf... even her son's. I do like how the story mirrors, in parts, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. It has a certain tone that causes dread, even if you don't know why yet. The other stories... well, they just don't really do much for me. There are characters that we recognize in each of them, and honestly, the subject matter in the remaining stories (except the very last) should speak to me more than it does. These are stories about the Vietnam war, and protesting it, and how that war changed an entire generation of people. It should feel important... but I found it just dragging on. I will say that King writes an amazing story... even when I'm feeling the drag and not really feeling the story, the words on the page still paint a vivid picture and I can see it clearly in my mind. I love that aspect of King's writing... I'm never at a loss when it comes to seeing what he wants to show me, it's just that sometimes I'm not as interested as I feel I'd need to be in order to fully appreciate it.
No one has ever written the joys of boyhood better than Stephen King. That's not what people talk about when they talk about him, but it's true. It's a subject that needs to be written about entirely without pretense and absolutely free of language too large for ball games and playing in the mud. Between this one, The Body, and It, the good reader will find himself transported into the actual moments of young pleasure, before girls take over and ruin the perfect freedom of true youth. Not that girls are bad, of course, just that something breaks at the moment when boys become aware of them and it never comes all the way back. Often, I wonder about how much of a man's life is spent trying to dance between the moment before and the excitement that comes after the discovery of girls. This small gap is the space that King covers in several of his books and all of them are delightful and thrilling in the way that only a carnival can be to a young boy. Moments of the supernatural and plot aside, it's this subject that draws me to the book.For reasons I can't fully explain, I've read the first 200 pages of this one half a dozen times over the years but never finished it. I've purchased the audiobook twice (by accident) and bought the paperback two or three times (lost copies). I've decided to finish it this time because it's been hanging there, a desire that's been unfulfilled and dangling over me for years. Somehow, I need to be free of it, or at least have passed the experience into the history of my reading pleasures. So here I go.William Hurt was a good choice for the audiobook. There's something about his voice that's trance-like and lulls you right in. I'm glad I've decided to finally and fully experience the book in just this way.King himself read the the next two stories in the book. Some reviewers suggested that the other stories were boring, but that wasn't my feel at all. I quite enjoyed them, especially the title story. I can see, however, that someone whose only reason for reading King is action/horror excitement may not find much of value in a book that's mostly composed of nostalgia and a look back at the turning points that shaped us as people. It's not exactly the stuff of horror lore. If you're that sort, you might want to shuffle on and find another book because this one is far too delicate and filled with entirely too much longing for the adventure seeking reader.Hurt returned for the final story. By now, the crossover between all the stories and characters was wrapped up tight and everywhere. It seemed almost like a novel with shifting perspectives over the years. Depending on your point of view, the interconnections could come across as overly-coincidental or just a tidy way of letting us know where things ended up with various people we'd come to know in their youth. I prefer the latter. Actually, I loved touching in on people years later, finding out how they'd turned out without the direct story of it ever really being the point of the story itself.The plain fact is that this book got to me far more than it should have. It was a beautiful novel shaped like short stories and made of youth lost and memory unwound. Maybe it took me so long to actually read it because I needed the years between to lose more and more of my past into the old fireplace of time. Maybe I needed to remember only enough to know how much I'd lost and how beautiful so much of it had been. Maybe it's a book that can only be understood when your life has made the same sorts of strange turns and you look back, wondering, lost, wistful.
What do You think about Hearts In Atlantis (2015)?
4.5 estrellas.Corazones en la Atlántida es esa clase de obra que cuando la terminás, resultás una persona diferente a la que eras cuando la empezaste. Los corazones pueden romperse. Si, los corazones pueden romperse. A veces pienso que sería mejor si muriéramos cuando lo hacen, pero no lo hacemos.Este es uno de los libros de King que más me gustaron. Las cinco historias presentes en esta novela me parecieron grandiosas. Todas tocan temas delicados, terroríficos y hasta tienen una alta dosis de drama. Algunas se pueden tornar un poco pesadas en ocasiones, sin embargo, King me cautivó con lo que transmite cada una. Cada una es especial. Y me pareció brillante que todas se relacionen, todas comparten algo. Los cinco relatos componen una cadena que tenés que seguir para saber hasta dónde te llevará. Llega a un libro como llegarías a una tierra inexplorada. Sin un mapa. Explóralo, y dibuja tu propio mapa... Un libro es como un inflador. No te da nada si no le das primero a él. Magnífico este trabajo de King.
—Franco Santos
It is as well written and engaging as any Stephen King book, which gives it a solid 3 stars, but it doesn't rate up with 5 star King like Misery, Different Seasons or Salem's Lot.This book is made up of five linked stories - the main story, "Low Men in Yellow coats" is the best, being the coming of age story of Bobby, a 12 year old who gets to know a mysterious older man over the course of the summer, while dealing with local bullies, first true love and his difficult, widowed mother. The old man's past links in with King's Dark Tower series, but I'd imagine that anyone who isn't familiar with King's magnum opus might be left a little cold with the references in this story.The next three stories deal with the impact of Vietnam on a various characters spinning out of the first story. The last story is a strangely sappy conclusion that doesn't really sit well with the others.Each story is compelling, filled with solid characters and plenty of style but as a whole, it doesn't quite gel. The slight links to the supernatural doesn't quite work; perhaps if King had stuck to the "real" world and how Vietnam affected his generation and how they grew up from the 60's to the 90's, this would have more weight. It is a good read, but I feel it just could have been better.
—Richard Barnes
There's a scene in one of the novellas, where the college kids are punch drunk and feeling wild, and one of the other students (a handicapped boy) is splashing and sliding on his crutches through ice and slush. Eventually he falls over. Total pandemonium breaks out. Everyone is laughing hysterically, and the laughter doesn't stop even as they're carrying the guy to the health center.This is not funny. This is also one of the funniest sections of the book, for me. We've all had a moment in our lives where we laughed until tears rolled down our faces, and when we tried to explain it to other people, we ended up having to wave our hands weakly and say, "well, I guess you had to be there."The brilliance of Stephen King is that he puts you there, and catches you up in the feelings and the mood until you, too, are laughing until you're crying and clutching your stomach and wheezing at something that isn't exactly funny and isn't funny at all when you try to tell other people about it.The genius of Stephen King is that this section is equally hilarious when you reread the book. It loses nothing by repetition.In "On Writing," King wryly comments that critics uniformly feel that his best work is twenty years behind him. I hold up this book to refute my real life friends who say the same. Brilliant, evocative, hilarious, and oh yeah, I also cried.
—Kathleen Dienne
