11/22/63

Jacob (Jake) Epping is a divorced high school teacher living a quiet life in Lisbon Falls, Maine. That is, until Harry Dunning, a janitor at the high school and one of Jake's adult students in his night class, turns in an essay titled "The Day That Changed My Life." Harry's story so moved Jake that he wished he could go back in time and change the past for Harry and his family. Little did Jake know he'd get that chance when his friend, Al Templeton, had a turn for the worse from one day to the next. Jake is shocked to learn his friend Al has been living in the past for years and is now dying of cancer. Al reveals a portal into the future, a place he calls "the rabbit hole" in the pantry of his diner, and tells Jake about his plan to show more stop Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating John F. Kennedy in 1963, which he's now too sick to carry out. That's when Jake and Al come up with a new plan, and Jake embarks on a five-year epic journey into the past to carry out Al's plan and right some wrongs of his own.

Emerging into the past in 1958, sixteen years before he was born, Jake discovers simpler times, before regulations and social media. While planning to stop a deluded assassin, Jake finds a town he loves, good friends he embraces, and Sadie, the love of his life. But time travel has consequences. The butterfly effect creates waves of change that Jake never sees coming until it's too late. Even though this story is over 800 pages, I finished it in record time because I was literally unable to put it down for very long. It's an exciting train ride that carries the reader along on a fascinating trip down memory lane into the worst and the best life has to offer. Well written and filled with memorable characters, this book is one of King's best accomplishments. show less

Accidenti a te, Stephen, hai scritto un libro nel quale un qualsiasi tuo fedele lettore riesce a vedere tutti i trucchi, gli ammiccamenti, le riprese e i riciclaggi della tua intera produzione, un libro in cui patentemente gigioneggi col lettore in modi che potrebbero rischiare il lancio dalla finestra del libro stesso.
E invece, anche qui, le pagine si girano quasi da sole, e generano sentimenti così intensi da far piangere quasi quanto mi ha fatto piangere Storia di Lisey.
Non è un horror questo, perché l'orrore è quello del quotidiano, non è un libro di fantascienza, alla fine il mondo resta quello di tutti i giorni, ma è un libro sull'amore che va al di là del tempo e dello spazio.
Accidenti a te, Stephen!

I've always loved Stephen King's writing and imagination, but have steered clear of him in more recent years because of this vague feeling of having "outgrown" the fantasy elements of his books.

Um, stupid me.

Only King could take a pretty much done-to-the-hilt concept such as time travel and make it completely fresh and gripping and original.

Only King could weave in elements of supernatural and fantasy in such a way that I believe every word.

If this book is a departure from the typical King horror novel, then I say "DEPART!!!" While 11/22/63 may not be a literary or historical fiction masterpiece, it doesn't matter one whit. This story is about what would happen if someone went back in time and changed the course of history by thwarting show more the Kennedy assassination. It's also a love story.

I seriously think King could write romance novels or chick lit and make the whole genre seem fresh. He just has a way of writing that evokes a "movie in your head" kind of feel. I can see his books. And he doesn't shy away from the details - - even when they are gory or scary - - and those details just make his books come alive for me.

Just really enjoyed this book and am happy it was recommended to me directly. The Stand is one of my favorites of all time, and it feels good to return to reading a truly well told story. show less

I’ve been reading this book for probably over a month. I’d heard mixed reviews before I started, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s pitched as the story of Jake Epping’s attempt to travel back in time to prevent the Kennedy assassination. I’ve always liked a good time travel story, so this caught my attention. But in reality this was something quite different, but still quite enjoyable and engrossing. We get a lot of detail about Jake’s years in the past that touches only peripherally on the Kennedy plot, and I think I found myself simply getting caught up in the story and enjoying the ride. King’s classic sense of foreboding pervades this novel. I knew we were building up to something, I wasn’t quite sure what, and show more I wanted to know where King was going to go with the Kennedy assassination. (Was Oswald really acting alone? Could Jake stop the assassination? What would happen if he did? How might history have been different?) I liked this part of the novel, but I also liked the way that right through the story King painted examples of both the best and the worst of things that ordinary fallible human beings are capable of doing. Yes, Kennedy’s death was a tragedy, but is, to take but one example, a traffic accident that kills a promising young student and leaves another scarred and disfigured any less of a tragedy for the individuals and the community concerned? The fabric of ordinary everyday life is full of injustices and tragedies which we wish to undo. 11.12.63 made me ponder about all of these things. It made me wonder about how much of a ripple effect undoing any one of these incidents might cause, about how apparently unrelated things are connected, about how tragedies might have positive consequences but are still tragedies, and about how "life turns on a dime". So I enjoyed this book, even though it wasn’t necessarily what I expected. And it left me wanting to revisit Ken Grimwood's Replay, another book which touched peripherally on similar questions about the Kennedy assassination, and a favourite of my teenage years. show less

Maybe I'm biased because I'm a sucker for time travel stories, but I LOVED 11/22/63. I'd never read Stephen King before tackling this monster of a novel, so I didn't know what to expect; I just knew a lot of people liked it. At a certain point (when Yellow Card Man becomes Black Card Man) I was SURE this was going to turn into a horror story, but it's not, it's just speculative/historical/science fiction -- however you want to categorize it -- with a sweet love story nestled in the center.

I found Jake Epping, the English teacher who narrates this book, to be a likeable protagonist, and I could understand the motivation behind most of his choices, which is good when the subject is something as off-the-wall as time travel. It's LONG, show more over 800 pages worth of long, but so compelling that I got through it quickly, although there was a long stretch where Jake was living across the street from Oswald for better stalking that was a little slow for me. The science behind the time travel is about as deep as it would be in, hmmm, a Doctor Who episode, maybe? But I'm fine with that, I prefer the story to the science.

And it's an absorbing story that sticks around in your head; I was doing something entirely unrelated to reading and noticed a coincidental moment of my own. I fully admit to cackling and declaring "THE PAST HARMONIZES, BITCHES!"

There are a few fade-to-black sex scenes that are a little awkward, but not downright awful, and I feel like Jake's love interest could have been fleshed out just a little more, but on the whole I enjoyed the crap out of 11/22/63 -- even without much previous knowledge of JFK's assassination, other than what I read in this old coffee table book my parents used to have -- and I'm going to be seeking out more novels by King. I'm sure he will really appreciate my support, I hear he's been struggling to find a fanbase. show less

I preface this review by stating from the outset that I am not a Stephen King fan. I have read a few books that I liked and attempted others in which I was not really interested. This book ranks as one of the best books I ever read and will remain in my "top shelf" pile meaning I will read and re-read this book over time.

If you love time travel, quantum string theory and exploring the meaning of the universe, then this book is for you. It is very thought provoking -one of the main themes being "the past is obdurate". There were a lot of interesting concepts brought into the story and I won't go into any of them here because this is a book that begs to be read and then discussed rather than reviewed and spoiled by information.

The detail show more is excellent while not being mired in minutiae which has been a criticism of King books. There is certainly an element of travelogue which I always enjoy, music and food. The characters are interesting and well rounded - both the fictional and the non-fictional ones and it's a great mix of both.

The story is marvelous. Any story that begs you to read just a few more pages, just one more chapter, just thirty more minutes and then the next morning has you picking it up as quickly as you can, is one of the great reads. When you finish and want to start again, it's a great read. And when the author references everything in the story from Ray Bradbury to my favorite Thomas Hardy novel of all time - "Jude the Obscure" - then it's a great novel.

Do not hesitate - buy this book. Read this book. You will not regret it! show less

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: If you had the chance to change the course of history, would you? Would the consequences be what you hoped?

Jake Epping 35 teaches high school English in Lisbon Falls, Maine, and cries reading the brain-damaged janitor's story of childhood Halloween massacre by their drunken father. On his deathbed, pal Al divulges a secret portal to 1958 in his diner back pantry, and enlists Jake to prevent the 11/22/1963 Dallas assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. Under the alias George Amberson, our hero joins the cigarette-hazed full-flavored world of Elvis rock 'n roll, Negro discrimination, and freeway gas guzzlers without seat belts. Will Jake lurk in impoverished immigrant slums beside show more troubled loner Lee Harvey Oswald, or share small-town friendliness with beautiful high school librarian Sadie Dunhill, the love of his life?

My Review: Jake Epping is a modestly successful high-school English teacher with a bad, broken marriage to an alcoholic behind him, a future of great sameness before him, and a date with destiny that cannot be foreseen. He is, in short, you, or me, or any other Stephen King hero.

What happens to Jake is, he gets a chance to change the world. Seriously. No spoilers here, but Jake gets a chance to make 11/22/63 just another date on the calendar Pope Julius invented for us. How? Through a little rabbit-hole in time that a friend of Jake's finds, uses, and tries to accomplish the salvation of Kennedy through the use of: Living from September 9, 1958, until he can get rid of Lee Harvey Oswald before November 22, 1963. But the past, you see, doesn't want to be changed. So the guy gets terminal cancer, comes home to 2011, and zaps Jake with the job of changing the future by changing the past.

Jake does. Boy, does he ever. Way big does he change the future.

Nothing in life is free. Remember the first time you heard that? Was it your mom or your dad who laid it on you? How hard did you kick against knowing it, and for how long?

Jake takes a week. I aged a hundred years in the week Jake took. So will you.

And that's all I'll say. Well, no, not all.

Every life has its losses, mine included. They're not so interesting to other people, of course, because folks are mostly interested in their own miseries and haven't got a lot of energy to spare for the troubles of others. Okay, fine; what fiction does is, it gives us a chance to have a catharsis, in the ancient Greek sense, the reason they invented plays and melodrama and tragedy and comedy. It was therapy to go to a play and scream and cry and howl with laughter. The whole point was to get it all out. Catharsis.

I experienced many moments of catharsis in reading this book. I was wrung dry of tears on several happy and several sad occasions. I relived the might-have-beens of my own little life. I redrew the contours of history a couple times, inspired by King's redrawings.

I was swept up in a story that I so wanted to be told, and I was completely aghast when it was over because I didn't want it to be over, and I didn't want the finality of the ending to step on my gouty toes the way I thought it would.

But, like so many before me, I stubbed my toe on the stair of King's story and said ouch, before I realized it was a stair. Stairs go up, or they go down, but you'll never know which in the darkness until you feel for the next one.

But the deal is, once you know which way you're going, you're already there, committed to the movement. Exactly, in other words, like living life.

This is why Stephen King is our own Mr. Dickens. I hate Dickens' bloated, boring prose and his tedious, ridiculous plots, but he and King both write the books that offer catharsis to the audience of the age. (Just for gods' sweet sake, quit trying to pretend Chuckles is still speaking to you! And those gawdawful dull Shakespeare plays, stop it! You know you hate 'em like the rest of us do!)

The ending of the story was, for this reader, a catharsis of epic proportions. I hate and envy Jake, I bleed inside for him, I want to comfort him and slug him. I am undone by jealousy for his last harmony between past and present. I want one, too.

I got it, my last harmony, and you might too, if you'll read the 840pp of exciting and fast-paced life in 11/22/63. Please do. show less