Fairy Tale by Stephen King
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it.
Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.
King’s storytelling in Fairy Tale soars. This is a magnificent and terrifying tale in which good is pitted against overwhelming evil, and a heroic boy—and his dog—must lead the battle.
Early in the Pandemic, King asked himself: “What could you write that would make you happy?”
“As if my imagination had been waiting for the question to be asked, I saw a vast deserted city—deserted but alive. I saw the empty streets, the haunted buildings, a gargoyle head lying overturned in the street. I saw smashed statues (of what I didn’t know, but I eventually found out). I saw a huge, sprawling palace with glass towers so high their tips pierced the clouds. Those images released the story I wanted to tell.”
HOLY SHIT….are you FLOORED that I actually picked up a book written by STEPHEN KING?!?!?
ME TOO, yall.
I’ve said before that my 40s have been all about all KINDS of growth and exploration in all KINDS of ways.
Welp…here ya go.
Guess I can add reading books by Stephen King on that ever expanding list.
While I have not been much of a fan of his in my adult years thus far, I will say that I have ALWAYS thought he was a TREMENDOUS story teller who is creative AF.
He is totally demented and super dark beyond ALL measure BUT the man IS seriously talented.
When I was a teen I was ALL ABOUT his scary stuff, back when I used to be into all that mess.
In fact, my mom has been a GINORMOUS fangirl of his since FOREVER and she is how I was first exposed to him.
She used to have a first edition autographed copy of one of his early published works but it got ruined in Hurricane Katrina….something she STILL finds gut wrenching even years later.
I grew up seeing ALL his books on her shelves AND watching the movies looooong before I had business watching them (case in point: I still have a fear of clowns because I watched “IT” when I was a kid)
But as yall know, *most* of my adult life I have stayed away from the super scary, gruesome and violent things.
Things seem to be changing I guess—for example, currently I am an actor in an EXTREMELY cool interactive dark art haunted museum project and I am having THE BEST FUCKING TIME EVER being scary and creepy.
And now I’m reading Stephen King.
The 40s continue to be the decade of WTF in the very best of ways.
BUTTTT….
This is NOT the “typical” kind of Stephen King book I expected.
It is not grotesque or terrifying like many of his other works I am familiar with—although there IS a part with MONSTROUS cockroaches that I could live without.
While it is definitely eerie, I think this book is more fantasy world/Neil Gaiman-esque….and MUCH more my “regular” speed.
It is soooooo gripping and immersive and knock your socks off imaginative.
It progresses slowly but in that good, can’t wait to keep reading kind of way.
It feels like a regular novel at first about a teen boy who comes of age after a terrible tragedy (common theme of King’s books).
He befriends an old man and his dog (for some reason I kept envisioning the old guy in Fraggle Rock lol) and starts to figure life out a bit. Feels pretty “normal” for awhile, but tidbits of foreshadowing are popped in just often enough to keep peaking your interest….you know SOMETHING will make a shift and shit is gonna go off the rails. Which of course it does.
It’s almost like two different books—there is the first part of real life happenings and then the second part is kind of a merged fairy tale. I can’t tell you the specifics because SPOILERS, but trust me, it is VERY cool and VERY interesting.
I think I was more intrigued by the first part, which is surprising considering how much I adore ANYTHING with a fantasy/fairy tale theme. About 3/4 of the way thru, my attention was lost for a bit and the fairy tale storyline got a bit tricky to keep up with.
The narration of this audiobook is SPOT ON. His voice is PERFECT for the main character and just embodies every emotion and event SO WELL.
Plus, Stephen King himself makes a few cameos as the old man’s voice recordings and it is FANTASTIC.
I completely enjoyed this book, my friends.
LOVED it.
It was a wonderful story by a terrific storyteller.
If you are not a Stephen King fan and never have been, just give this one a shot….I bet you will think the same thing.
Not sure how many other of his books I will partake in, but at this point in my life, I believe ANYTHING can happen so who knows what next awaits???