Bag of Bones (Stephen King, 1998)

I actually still have about 170 pages left of this to read but, seeing as the major climactic plot development has already happened, I really don’t think there’ll be a whole lot else to say and much more before the end that will sway my opinion.

Bag of Bones is intermittently excellent but is far too long. The story of an author who suffers from severe writers block after the sudden death of his wife, the narrative is split between two concurrent plot threads: the first being our protagonist’s move to his summer lodge in Sara Laughs (just outside the fictional town of Derry, featured in It and Insomnia) and his subsequent involvement in a bitter custody battle between a billionaire software mogul and his daughter in law. The second being Sara Laugh’s dark and cursed past, a past that is visited upon our hero from the moment he arrives at the cabin.

The main problem here is the ghost story element, a superfluous story thread that feels added purely on the basis that this is a Stephen King novel, therefore necessary. It just doesn’t work. The real meat here is the custody battle. It is this stuff that saves the book from being too dull to give up on half way through. It’s compelling and tense, and, in true King fashion, goes in directions you wont see coming. In Max Devore, King gives us another villain you just love to hate, a horrid, bitter old man who is determined to gain sole custody of his granddaughter through any means.

A fair effort but definitely marks the start of King’s downfall pre and post accident. Oddly though, I’m finding I’d like to try From a Buick 8 again.

3/5