Later - Stephen King

Fiction/Supernatural

Rating: 8.5/10

Don’t have time for one of Mr. King’s chilling epic offerings?  Then this slim book will give you just enough to last you through a few bedtimes.  Not that you will sleep.

Later is the beautiful coming-of-age story of Jamie, who is unusually perceptive. We know as we grow up that we will need to face our demons, but for most of us that is metaphoric. Jamie is not so fortunate, truth be told, he can see dead people. And the dead cannot tell a lie.  Which of course offers up some distasteful opportunities for the exploitation of his gift among the living.  But not to worry, as the saying goes, payback’s a bitch.

Like many of his work’s that have young narrators, King imbues a sweetness and melancholy that will make your heart ache even as it clenches in horror.

I wouldn’t want to be a character in a Stephen King book.  Just going about my life, thinking my thoughts and then…bam!  Thrust head long into a level of terror that sinks it claws and teeth in.  But being on the outside, looking in?  It sure is a delight.

Footnote: A friend of mine recently had the audacity to ask if I thought Stephen King had a ghost writer. When I showed great restraint and spoke to him calmly about it, he said, and I quote, “well, he’s not Shakespeare”.  I disagree, I think he is in fact the Shakespeare of the latchkey kid.  So there.