Sleeping Beauties is the first new-ish Stephen King book I've read in some time. It's actually a collaboration between King and his younger son, Owen. But the prose remains Stephen King-like, which is to say pretty basic. Given that it's about 700 pages long, this is a practical choice.
King pere and fils feel engaged, in tough with the times. A mysterious woman wanders into a small Appalachian town and causes chaos. Women all over the world are falling asleep and being enveloped in thick cocoons. If anyone tries to cut the cocoons open, the women kill them. There's a certain amount of symbolism inherent in this premise, but the effect is material. What women used to do is just not being done, with cataclysmic effects.
Stephen King has been pretty open in recent years about being a recovering addict, and an intervention from his family had a lot to do with his becoming sober. So it's kind of hilarious that in this book, any woman who wants to stay awake has to do massive amounts of speed. Or for that matter that a male doctor pretty much on the side of good is a heavy meth user.
King pere and fils feel engaged, in tough with the times. A mysterious woman wanders into a small Appalachian town and causes chaos. Women all over the world are falling asleep and being enveloped in thick cocoons. If anyone tries to cut the cocoons open, the women kill them. There's a certain amount of symbolism inherent in this premise, but the effect is material. What women used to do is just not being done, with cataclysmic effects.
Stephen King has been pretty open in recent years about being a recovering addict, and an intervention from his family had a lot to do with his becoming sober. So it's kind of hilarious that in this book, any woman who wants to stay awake has to do massive amounts of speed. Or for that matter that a male doctor pretty much on the side of good is a heavy meth user.
2 comments:
Since there's very little likelihood I'll ever read the book myself I just read the synopsis. It sounds typically Stephen Kingish in that it's entertaining, albeit light, notwithstanding the violence. I wonder if Owen has any chance of developing his own style or if he'll simply follow in his Father's (successful) footsteps. He could do worse.
I didn't know Stephen King had been an addict. Do you think his work drove him to drugs?
I haven't read much of Owen's solo work but he does have his own independent career. He's not on the bestseller lists, though, unlike his brother Joe Hill. I'd guess that he wrote much of the first draft and his father rewrote because if you buy a 700-page Stephen King novel you want it to read like Stephen King.
I wouldn't say his addiction was much related to the content of his work. It's more the standard pattern of a suddenly successful person self-medicating to keep themselves going.
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