Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time. (www.goodreads.com)
My two cents
This is a good novel.
The reason why is because I wanted to keep on reading it and if I had more time it would have been devoured in less than a week, for sure. But as time is precious and the only downtime I had was at work during lunch, I was forced to read this novel slowly and I am pretty sure that made all the better.
Stephen King has always been a favourite for me, I've read 95% if his work and those I haven't read are mostly about football and I don't give a damn about that.
11-22-63 is a winner. It's a love story, a survival guide and sometimes even funny although with a sarcastic tone to it. Despite the unlucky chosen title, there's nothing wrong with it. King at its best.
The protagonist Jake, aka George Amberson, feels like a real life character, someone you might know from the neighbourhood, maybe even someone who has taught your son or daughter in school. And yet he transforms into an all-american hero. And it doesn't stop there, when pull comes to shove he sets all that aside for the love if his life and still it doesn't end there.
Then there is Sadie Dunhill, a clumsy librarian, escaping from a bad marriage and to be falling in love with our dear George. Their love is what love should be like. Dreamy, yet realistically hurtful so you know you have to treasure every moment. And how they could do the Lindy hop.
Stephen king keeps you on the end of your seat and for once his ending is superb. Way to go, I'd say and never stop writing!
Personal rating: ****
Thickness: 849 pages
First published in 2011
