Monday, October 7, 2013

11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63 by Stephen King

What if there was a magical place in the back room of a diner in a little town in Maine which led to September 9, 1958.  What would you do?  Take a stroll down Main Street and stop for a root beer?  Make some “lucky” bets?  (Is it truly a wager when you know the outcome?)  Just sit on a street corner and watch the awesome cars go by?

What if you are introduced to this “rabbit hole” by a man who had a grand plan?  He has done all the research, but didn’t quite make it to 1963 and had to come back to the present (2011) early.  Would you take over his mission and live five years of your life in the past to prevent the assassination of JFK?  That’s exactly what Jake sets out to accomplish.

As usual, Stephen King tells a great story.  Fans will appreciate the nods subtle, and not so subtle, to his other fiction: It, ShawshankRedemption and Christine.  It is a time commitment, it’s a huge book, but alternating between the audiobook and the print I finished it in a week.  Once you get into the story you really want to keep reading to see how Jake’s life in the past unfolds.

The book will make you think, especially about the butterfly effect.  How do your actions, small and large, affect the future?  If you could change the past, should you?  Were the good old days really that good?  What would you do?