It’s far enough away that we don’t even want to think about it yet, but suddenly there’s an excerpt and we wanted a peek. Figured you might, too. In any case, a new novel by Stephen King is always something to get excited about, even if well in advance.
It turns out that Fairy Tale, King’s new novel (due to drop September 22, so be patient!) starts with happiness, or the reaching for it.
“What could you write that would make you happy?” King writes. “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.”
While that doesn’t describe Fairy Tale, which King wrote after these ruminations, the book’s PR material draws some hints:
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. Then, when Charlie is 17, he meets a dog named Radar and his 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.
Speaking of trying to achieve happiness, for the last two years, Yale University has been offering a course in just that. So far well over three million people have taken the course online. It’s free (a little more if you’re looking for a certificate. Hey: there’s something for the resume), and it’s here.
Meanwhile, today Entertainment Weekly delivers an excerpt of Fairy Tale, and that’s here. You can order the book here. ◊
Leave a Reply