Bag of Bones (original 1998; edition 2011)

A book that I liked, but not as much as some of the other King books I read. Somehow the story of this particular book didn't grab me as I know some of the others have.
It was a nice read, interesting, but I managed to put it away and not think about it, where as a book I really, really like haunts me untill I pick it up again.
This one didn't have that magic for me. ( )

it probably gets old for people, but i love that so many of his characters are writers and we get a little insight into the writing world that he creates for them (that i know may or may not reflect anything in king's actual writing world).

there was a lot more supernatural stuff in this one than i'm usually comfortable with, but i thought he used it well. (if there's going to be a supernatural element, i actually prefer that it is a larger force than a throwaway, and matters more to the story. removing the supernatural part of this book makes the entire thing fall apart, so there was more purpose to it.) so this is a ghost story, a haunted house story, a revenge story, a love story, a finding family story, an oppression story... there's a little of everything here and overall it's well done. there are hiccups here and there (things like max devore being too one dimensional in a way that could have easily been fixed, i think; things like kyra being too old most of the time for the 3 she was supposed to be - most 3 year olds can't be understood by people when they talk let alone read and write, even just a little) but even when those things aren't small, they're pretty easy to overlook in this book.

as is typical for king, the pacing here is great, the characters (other than max, really) are generally drawn so well, and the story is enough to keep you reading. i liked that he put in issues of race and made the supernatural element a little more complicated with that history. this is good and crackling and i'm surprised i didn't remember anything from my original reading of it. i really like the dilemma he poses at the very end (he answers it for his character but not for the reader and perhaps not for himself) about reading/writing about tragedy and murder and life - i've felt sometimes when reading mysteries about a murder that it's kind of unseemly. that this actually happens in real life to people. that maybe it's disrespectful somehow. i like that he brought this up. everyone needs to make their own decision about it, even to deciding if it's something worth bothering about, but i like that he brought it up.

"Generator light is never quite steady, never quite still - it seems to breathe and sigh." ( )

What is a bag of bones? In Stephen King's eponymous novel there is more than one answer. A character in a novel can be merely a bag of bones, a flat character, that is. It can also be taken quite literally, that is bones put in a bag and buried in the ground. The protagonist in this novel is not just a bag of bones. Mike Noonan is a writer who suffers from writer's block after his wife's sudden and unexpected death. As he decides for a change of place and relocates to his secluded vacation house in an unicorporated town simply called 'the TR', something is not right. There are dreams about the house, there are whispers in the house, fridge magnets move around on their own to create short messages. Mike Noonan wants to find out more about the goings-on on the TR and comes ever closer to uncovering a past that many in the town would rather keep buried. Right on his first day, Noonan meets Mattie Devore, a young widow in her twenties who has a three-year-old daughter. After their paths cross, Mike Noonan takes an interest in their lives. Soon, a connection between Mattie's father-in-law and the town's dubious past surfaces.

While Stephen King managed to entertain me with yet another good novel in which the characters are not simply bags of bones, I could not really connect to the story fully. The relation between Mike Noonan and Mattie Devore is what kept me reading, but I found myself less and less interested in the background story of the TR at a certain point. I cannot quite put my finger on what it was that bugged me, but it might have been the too-much-work-induced break of some weeks in my reading process that probably made me lose the connection to the novel. I never really found my way back in fully. It was not that I could not remember certain details or parts that might have been important, it is rather that I somehow did not feel the plot. All in all, Bag of Bones is a fairly good and enjoyable read, but for me it lacked that extra something. 3.5 stars. ( )

Excerpts from my original GR review (Apr 2009):
- Engaging, page-turning ghostly yarn, and thankfully a quickish read... Mike Noonan is frozen in grief and mired in writer's block after his young wife's tragic death. He seeks sanctuary of sorts at their lakehouse, but confronts anything but rest.
- Besides King's usual ascension of terror as the story progresses, I thought he did a great job with characters. The fiendish old Max Devore and his horrid mistress Rogette serve as truly detestable antagonists. Mike is left alone in his standoff with both his human enemies and the mysterious hauntings which invade even his dreams...
- I found myself quietly rooting for the helpless Mattie and Kyra, never sure how their fates would play out. My interest held steady despite the length, so that I might tackle another King tome, like The Stand. ( )

I began reading this book January of this year, and ended up setting it aside. I find it amusing that I finished it over the course of a year, though I did start it over again to do so - can't have myself forgetting anything important, can I?

Bag of Bones was a good book, though not a great one. It is an interesting example of a turning point in Stephen King's writing. The style of the book wavers from time to time, and there are several instances where Stephen King's normally beautiful grasp of language turns uncertain, even self-conscious. There are several points where I lost the thread of the story due to the nature of the writing, but it was worth keeping up with.

What Bag of Bones lacks in terms of confident writing it makes up for in a wonderful plot. The first person narration goes haywire from time to time - hints are dropped, forgotten, brought up again - in the course of reading large chunks of the book the reader can surmise some of the conclusions before Noonan himself does. While not as tightly plotted as some of King's later books, this one does show the confidence to come. Like a crossword puzzle, the book builds up to that singular point where everything falls into place.

Needless to say, I did enjoy the book, and I would recommend it both for its strengths and for its faults. It is a fun and engrossing read and I look forward to seeing that A&E adaptation of it.

Happy writing. ( )