Whether it is apocalyptic thrillers (The Stand), human drama (Dolores Clairborne, Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption), or just outright horror (It, Thinner, Christine, etc), his stories never fail to enchant, holding the reader’s attention from their first pages until their conclusion.And what genre does Toh put WTTK in? Fairy tale. Calling the novel a "midquel" (I've never heard that term), Toh says the book is "dark" and "unforgettable." He thinks the book both adheres to and plays with "fairytale conventions."
I liked the review because it brought in elements I had not considered. Midquel. Fairytale. King can write anything.
The review is HERE.
I think King is up to more in WTTK than just playing with genre conventions. While reading it I was reminded of this Peter Straub book called Shadowlands and I remember a comment King once had on that book. He called it "A clever excavation of the roots of the horror tale."
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect, I think King is doing the same thing with Keyhole and does it even better than Straub. I think King's whole point is that horror stories grew out of fairytales and that horror is just a traditional fairytale with an emphasis more on the trolls, golbins and spirits than in regular fantasy.
ChrisC