When I last posted here, in March, about reading Stephen King's 11.22.63 I talked about gently spinning out my reading of the novel, but I didn't quite expect that to mean I'd still be a long way off the end a third of the way into May. I did, however, point out the particularly intriguing nature of the text, and I think it's that quality which means I've been quite happy to dawdle along.
There are two aspects of the work that seem to me rather different than anything King has done before. One, obviously, is the treatment of Lee Harvey Oswald. Clearly a lot of research has been done and the picture that emerges of the president's assassin is a complex one - both thoroughly despicable yet paradoxically sympathetic, if that's the right word, which it isn't. But it's the only one I can think of now to represent the fullness of the portrait.
The other is the romance (if that's the right word, again, which it isn't) between Jake the narrator and Sadie, his love interest (which fails to do justice to the curiously obsessive treatment of her as a character and the relationship in general terms.)
I have no idea what's going to happen in the next 150 pages or so, except that a president will die somehow. I think.
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