Just Fuc(King) Do It: Finally Reading Stephen King - Bag of Bones
You know what’s really fun to read while you’re in the middle of a mildly anxiety-inducing life event like getting married? A book where a writer’s wife dies unexpectedly, and he slogs through years of intense grief before landing himself in the middle of a spooky small-town mystery. That’s right Horror Bound fiends, I’m back with another installment of Just Fuc(King) Do It: Finally Reading Stephen King, and I brought a Bag of Bones.
Mike Noonan is a thriller writer that seems to be at the top of his game when his wife, Jo, dies suddenly. Mike’s grief is heavy and unshakeable, so much so that he loses years to it before breaking the cycle by heading out to his historic lake house named Sara Laughs. Lately, thinking about the house has not only recalled tender moments with his wife, but also nightmares that won’t let up. Mike expects revisiting Sara Laughs to sting a little, but memories of his past happiness with Jo aren’t the only things haunting him when he returns to the lake—Mike has fleeting encounters with rapid-moving figures who come at him or seem to be chasing him when he’s on the property. He hears voices that whisper and scream. His alphabet refrigerator magnets even get in on the game and start forming words and mysterious phrases.
On top of all that, the townsfolk of unincorporated “TR-90” seem to be acting more standoffish than normal. Some of these spooky happenings seem to be pushing him to dig into the history of not only the town but also his house’s namesake, an African-American singer from the earlier 1900’s named Sara Tidwell. All of this culminates in the story of fellow TR-90 resident Mattie Devore and her daughter Kyra whose lives are unknowingly tangled deep with the hidden history of the town. Mike becomes infatuated by Mattie and sees in Kyra the future taken from him by Jo’s death. To save them, he must conquer his own grief and unbury the town’s dark past to break its hold on their fate.
I’m probably the last person to this party, but yet again I’m seeing how King is a master at taking a legitimate, natural fear and using it as fuel for the unreal. Death and oblivion are terrifying ideas to try to come to terms with, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was almost cruel to be reminded of them at this particular time in my life. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the midst of near-perfect happiness like Mike and Jo. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just spurned your sinister-millionaire-dad’s wishes and decided to go for your own happiness and marry the local library girl and raise a family, like Mattie’s deceased husband Lance. It doesn’t matter if you have finally gotten some respect from some of the TR-90 citizens despite being different from them, like Sara Tidwell. Your life is ultimately outside of your control no matter how tight you try to hold on—life will end and even the memory of you will eventually fade away.
Okay, you might at least get a cameo in Poltergeist if you’re really lucky.
Any fucking with this cycle in Bag of Bones causes imbalance: Mike refuses to move past his wife’s death and so his life falls apart—on top of not being able to write again, he barely manages to even exist. King portrays Mike’s grief in a way that’s effective without dragging on or killing any interest in the plot--he lets you sit in Mike’s loss along with him without it completely destroying you and your ability to see it in the context of how it’s affecting Mike. Mike can’t find out what the hell is going on in the TR until he moves past his grief and puts that energy into uncovering its secrets.
Similarly, King’s TR-90 is so effective because it’s real: who hasn’t wondered about what happens to a vacation town after all of the out-of-towners have gone and the bright lights have been turned off? TR-90 is portrayed as charming because it holds on to traditions from the past and never loses its small-town ways despite outsiders moving in and out—it even gives special recognition and almost celebrity-status to its oldest citizen. But, that insistence on remaining outside the influence of time and others isolates the town and leaves it open for history to hold a little too much power. And so, its citizens stay in the grasp of long ago events caused by the same rejection of the new or unknown.
Bag of Bones was a great way to start my summer reading. King pulls you through the reality of loss and grief to put you down in the middle of a small lake-town vacation hot-spot hiding a secret, and he did it so well that every time I opened the book it was kind of like a mini-vacation but with the perfect summer chills. Pick up a copy, grab your favorite summer drink, and get ready to be unavailable for a while--you’ll be on the TR-90 until it lets you go.
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