Bag of Bones

Saturday, October 13 2007 @ 05:53 PM GMT+4

  Bag of Bones by Stephen King.  I've been reading a fair bit of Stephen King lately, mostly because of it's easy availability and the lack of mental effort required to follow it in comparison to other genre horror. It's a longterm project of mine to read all the books tied in with his 'Dark Tower' oeuvre, and Bag of Bones is one of the earliest tie-ins according to darktower.net, to be read alongside The Gunslinger. It's also, in my opinion, one of King's subtler and more emotionally effective horrors, at least partially because of the attention paid to classic antecedents. This is a novel that owes atmosphere and loss to DuMaurier's Rebecca – a work the protagonist writer-hero continually references, echoed by King in his misty Sara Laughs, and the 'white nana' that looks like Manderly's housekeeper. Ostensibly about a child custody battle, Bag of Bones is about mortality, loss, ghosts, and collective sin, and for all the depth of subject, King manages to pull out a story without screwing up the ending. Definitely one of the better 90's novels, and one I'd recommend for anyone in the mood for a creepy noirish saga.

Read October 2007

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