The change had more to do with King becoming an institution. The world’s bestselling story teller with no asterisks. There are more books on shelves with the name Stephen King than anyone alive. It is not exactly a hot take to say that Salem’s Lot, The Stand and The Shining are works of genius. A victim of his own success in the later years King has become a writer who could write books hundreds of pages longer than they need to be and no editor would stop him.
That said I still read them, I am a constant reader even if I am 60/40. 60% good to great and 40 percent doesn’t connect with me. I don’t love them like I used to. My tastes as an older reader really don’t mesh with King. I like well plotted and structured stories without extra fat. SK famously rarely (he says never) plots or outlines and writing by the seat of his pants means diversions happen, stories he doesn’t know how to end happen. I think the best stories in King’s 21st century output are the ones where the ending was clear and he had no choice to build to that target. Doctor Sleep is an example of that, his novellas are almost always stronger for that reason.
The Outsider started strong but lost me at 150 pages in, Elevation was OK, and The Institution felt recycled. I have been dying for this. A truly great Stephen King novel from start to finish. Released from the Hard Case paperback line this book is a pulp crime story but it is also straight horror fiction and firmly in the wider King mythos. As a horror fiction tale it might be the most effective novel for turning on the creeps that King has written in a long time.
The story of Jamie who sees dead people. Yes, it has the same set-up as Sixth Sense and Jamie addresses that. This is a similar set-up but goes in very different direction so don’t worry about that. Jamie lives with his struggling single mother, who is dating a woman who is a dirty NYPD detective named Liz. Long after Liz is supposed to be out of their life she can’t forget Jamie’s talent. Seeing the dead, being able to talk to them. Even against their will they speak truth to Jamie.
I was thinking about how I normally don't enjoy first person in novels. If a story is good enough, I will forget about it, but I constantly nitpick moments when authors cheat. I always point to Stephen King's Delores Claiborne as an example where the narrator NEVER cheats. Later is GREAT first-person written in a kid's voice and it NEVER cheats.
SK has skill for writing children and speaking in their voices. In this novel he is doing subtle and genius things to those moments of young person’s POV. Jamie is telling this story as a young man and SK is in perfect command of this. The word LATER is so important to the narrative not just because it is the title. Jamie is telling this story of his childhood with the gift of insight insight, so he often gets ahead of the boy in the story. I didn’t understand that until later, or I would learn later.
The information that is ahead of Jamie or to be revealed later is often the drive of the story. It is a neat trick and it was the only way Jamie could tell this story without cheating. You see Stephen King knows Jamie is not the storyteller he is, but SK uses this method to pace out the story. A weaker story teller would have withheld elements because of plot. SK wisely knows that Jamie lives in fear of telling his secret to anyone. Jamie has to convince you the reader first of what he can do before he can hit you with the last two reveals. So, he is choosing to withhold things for a reason. Jamie is trying to build the reader’s trust.
Along the way events happen that tie the novel to one of King’s classic novels. I had this spoiled for me but honestly, I have not read that book in 30 years so it didn’t affect me as a reader at all. I would have totally missed it if I had not heard. The connection however is deeper that it appears on the surface, readers paying close attention to little details will make a neat connection.
In my opinion this is the best King novel since Doctor Sleep or maybe 11/22/63. It might be his best in this century. The quality is up there with his Full Dark novellas like Good Marriage or 1922. It may sound like hyperbole but I really happy to report this. I don’t want to spoil the twists but the first one is gnarly and scary, the second is just gross and disturbing. I don’t entirely know how I feel about accept once again King got me in the feels.
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