Book Review: Holly by Stephen King

 

Holly by Stephen King

449 pages, Hardcover
Published September, 2023 by Scribner

Maybe you have heard of Stephen King? Just kidding look several people have told me they were looking forward to my review as I play it straight up. I love Uncle Steve, I think I love him as a person more than I do as a writer. I love his interviews and the highs in his career have been good enough I will always check out his work.

Like a new Metallica album in the metal scene, the release of a new Stephen King novel will get an opinion out of everyone. My Stephen King love is mostly in the older early work but that doesn't mean I have not enjoyed some recent works. I absolutely loved Doctor Sleep and Later.  At the same time, I found Fairy Tale and The Institute to be unreadable. The Outsider started strong but the end didn't deliver on the promise of the first two hundred pages. My point is I love Stephen King but I am also honest about my opinion.

That said I enjoyed Holly.  Is it perfect? It doesn't have to be. King has written plenty of masterpieces even for Steph Curry misses a shot or two.  I'll take as many Metallica albums and Stephen King novels as we can get.

Holly Gibney is the point of view character of this novel, and although this is the third Holly book if you count 1/4 of a novella collection. This one is Holly in the spine of the book. I admit I leave for vacation tomorrow and I have one foot out the door as I write this review, but let me start by saying that for the most part a lot of the things that annoyed me about books like Fairy Tale are not here.

This novel has a focus. It feels like King, who is notorious for not having plan, had to have an idea. The novel has a structure that Fairy Tale didn't have. Events had to happen in a certain order, there was research he had to do into the Harris couple.

It is not a spoiler to point out that the book is about serial killer seniors. The concept of the super carnivore professor who thinks eating human livers will keep him and his wife young appeals to this vegan. King is said that he wouldn't be good at who-done it. This is a who-done-it for Holly but for the reading is a why-done-it. You dig.

SK cuts back and forth between points of view and timelines to set suspense from the parallel track of the stories. This makes me think he must have had some kind of plan. Just as important to the book as Holly is the 2021 post-COVID era it is set in.  That was interesting to me because I traveled around that time I had the experience of seeing regional levels of public response. Where I live in San Diego the fears of COVID were pretty light, we have year-round warm weather lots of outdoor options. When I traveled to the Bay Area was the first time I was asked for a Vax card to get into a movie. It seemed to me that the COVID reaction was over the top but that is likely my perception.

The story starts with Holly's MAGA mom dying from COVID. There are some interesting moments about online funerals. Holly wants life back to normal and takes a gig looking for Penny Dahl's lost daughter Bonnie. Her partner is sick with COVID and the clock is ticking.

It is no mystery to the readers. We saw the old professors Rodney and Emily Harris take Bonnie and through flashbacks, we know they kidnap and eat their victims. King does an excellent job juxtaposing these events to create tension. while I have some nitpicks overall I think the novel works quite well.  

Before I talk about the nitpicks I want to say I know this is a little like telling Mozart he hit some wrong notes. Stephen King is human and I am just a reader here. I think King being one of those baseline authors that everyone reads means he is like a common language we can speak in. It gives a much wider world of readers and writers a common book we can talk about the mechanics of what works and what doesn't. Being the most popular writer in the universe means he is a language we all speak. Plus a nimrod like me won't hurt his sales right?

So the Harris couple as a serial killer team can't have the motivations of a normal, sad sack lonely serial killer. They are open to each other, so the motivation SK develops is a good one. The idea that this carnivore zealot forces their victims to eat almost raw liver before dying was horrifying to this vegan.  Kudos to him for putting a vegan in that basement who refused.  Because for that scene I had the thought that if I was there I would do the same thing you. You are going to kill me anyways fuck you I am not eating that.

This book has brutal moments, it has thoughtful moments. There were typical asides that SK is known for. He probably spent more pages on the Bowling league which led Holly to find the killers.   My friend Ivan Zoric was more bothered by that, and for me, it was chapters about Barbara, Holly's partner's sister learning from a  poet that felt too long and unneeded. Together 60 or 70 pages could have been trimmed but I am OK with a few Stephen King asides.

I can live with that, but the novel has constant Tell don't show moments. One of the first fundamental rules of writing is Show, Don't Tell. As in don't tell me what happened, show me. It is one of the first bad habits editors have to pound out of young writers. Constantly in a chapter from the victim's point of view, it will give background about the other victims, stuff they couldn't know.

For example on page 271. In the scene, Holly is at the Bowling alley getting closer to the killers Professor Harris, through his bowling team. Several chapters earlier an entire chapter was devoted to Penny Dahl talking about Holly on social media, Rodney and Emily Harris were on to her and it was creepy.  Then in a Chapter from Holly's  POV, "It never crosses her mind  that Penny Dahl has outed her Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter." Well yes it would be impossible for it to cross her mind that. That is the point. You already showed us that earlier no need to tell us again.

On page 290 Bonnie is in the basement "There's a Porta-john in the corner of the cell, and like Jorge Castro, Cary Dressler, and Ellen Craslow before her (Stinky Steinman Perhaps not so much), She knows what it means: someone intends for her to be here awhile."

Bonnie has no reason to know the names of the other victims, or that one victim didn't need a porta potty as much. Where the fuck was King's editor to ren pen that and say "all you need here is She knows what it means: someone intends for her to be here awhile."

Sorry to nitpick but King deserves better editing than that. We all writer sentences like that, we all push ideas that someone has to say "I see what you are trying but it doesn't work." I also feel like King is not trusting his readers to remember. Look I get the man is 75 years old. I hope to live that long and stay as sharp as him but the editing let him down.

Overall I liked Holly, I enjoyed the process but was bothered by a few of these tiny moments. Holly is not a bad book and I am simply holding King up to the high standard I expect from him after reading 50 or so of his books.