Cell
CELL (Stephen King) - Two Stars
By page six in this novel, one character is ripping another's throat out using only her teeth.
Stephen King wastes little time with exposition in Cell, kind of a cross between The Stand, 28 Days Later and maybe Night of the Living Dead. In Cell, a mysterious cell phone "pulse" drives everyone using a cell phone into a state of mindless, homocidal violence. You never really know exactly what's going on in the book, as your only knowledge comes from the character's reflective supposition. I enjoy King's fables because many of them keep just their fingertips on reality: they aren't believeable, per se, but they aren't wholly unbelieveable, either.
King has just enough original material in the book to keep it from seeming like a rehash of known sci-fi concepts, but borrows just enough material to prevent the book from seeming entirely original. He still throws a few good curveballs into the story (nothing I'll spoil here: suffice to say that the development of the "phone-crazies" and the dawning realization that there's more to them than meets the eye is probably the foremost pleasure of the novel), but it remains just an average novel, not one of King's best, and probably only suited for King fans (which I would consider myself).
A couple of minor gripes: I understand that (main character) Clay's motivation to find his son (Johnny) is a reasonable one, but that doesn't mean that I want to read two paragraphs of him pining over his boy ever other page. King really goes overboard on Clay's fondness and worry for his son. And the resolution of the Clay-Johnny sub-plot I found unstatisfying, as it required just a bit too much of a suspension of disbelief for my tastes.
I've got Nabokov, Grass, and Ishiguro next up on my reading list, so we'll be getting back to the "high-brow" stuff on this page soon enough.
By page six in this novel, one character is ripping another's throat out using only her teeth.
Stephen King wastes little time with exposition in Cell, kind of a cross between The Stand, 28 Days Later and maybe Night of the Living Dead. In Cell, a mysterious cell phone "pulse" drives everyone using a cell phone into a state of mindless, homocidal violence. You never really know exactly what's going on in the book, as your only knowledge comes from the character's reflective supposition. I enjoy King's fables because many of them keep just their fingertips on reality: they aren't believeable, per se, but they aren't wholly unbelieveable, either.
King has just enough original material in the book to keep it from seeming like a rehash of known sci-fi concepts, but borrows just enough material to prevent the book from seeming entirely original. He still throws a few good curveballs into the story (nothing I'll spoil here: suffice to say that the development of the "phone-crazies" and the dawning realization that there's more to them than meets the eye is probably the foremost pleasure of the novel), but it remains just an average novel, not one of King's best, and probably only suited for King fans (which I would consider myself).
A couple of minor gripes: I understand that (main character) Clay's motivation to find his son (Johnny) is a reasonable one, but that doesn't mean that I want to read two paragraphs of him pining over his boy ever other page. King really goes overboard on Clay's fondness and worry for his son. And the resolution of the Clay-Johnny sub-plot I found unstatisfying, as it required just a bit too much of a suspension of disbelief for my tastes.
I've got Nabokov, Grass, and Ishiguro next up on my reading list, so we'll be getting back to the "high-brow" stuff on this page soon enough.
posted by Kevin at 11:35 AM
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