Bag of Bones

I finished it in less than a day.

Right away King hits you with the emotions, our protagonist dealing with the sudden death of his wife, and made even sadder as we get his remembrance of tines spent with her. King really knows how to hook a reader in to its characters. The protagonist, Michael, is dealing with some severe writer's block. To combat both his grief and his black, Michael decides to return to their vacation home. It seems he is not alone however, haunted by something. Things that happened in his dreams seem to echo in his life as well.
It seems Michael is able to overcome his grief and his writer's block thanks in part to a young woman by the name of Mattie, her and her daughter become a part of Michael's life when he helps her in a custody battle. Quite the mystery surrounding this story as Michael cones to realize his wife was hiding things from him and he works to uncover just what it was she felt she had to hide. An absolute shocker hits the reader with just a little over 100 pages left and honestly I felt my heart torn out a bit by it. Very emotional. I was more than invested in this slow burn story and its characters. A truly magnificent read!

It started off slow, but picked up. It got kind of boring in the middle a few times, but overall it was a very well written book. The story line was amazing and the characters where developed so well. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors and Bag of Bones is now in my top five. I found that I couldn't put it down after I got deep into it, I had to stop a few times to sleep. But I woke up a few times dreaming about Mattie, Kyra, and Mike on the TR living a happy life, till I finished it today. I did not see it panning out the way it did, it took me for a loop and I quite enjoyed it.

Actual rating: 3.5 stars, rounded up. As I’ve been reading through King’s back catalogue, I’ve come across very few of his stories that hadn’t been spoiled to some extent for me, simply by the culture in which we live. While I had never read The Shining or Pet Sematary or ‘Salem’s Lot, I had some idea what was going to happen because they’re so present in our collective cultural psyche. The same could be said for Carrie, and Misery, and IT, and so many other King novels. But Bag of Bones? I went into this one completely blind. And as with Needful Things and Rose Madder, other books of his that I knew nothing about, it was more impactful because of my lack of exposure. It’s not among my favorite King books I’ve read, but Bag of Bones will be sticking with me for a while. “I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.” First and foremost, this is a story rooted in grief. King does such a good job at portraying honest grief, at showing how that grief can sneak up on you at the most unexpected moments. I mourned right alongside Mike, because his grief was so vividly expressed and rawly displayed. We see how grief doesn’t just recede over time; it might ebb for a period, but it comes in waves. We see how grief isolates, and how it can freeze you in a single moment for days, or months, or years. And we see how grief effects the creative process in ways ranging from subtle to violent. “Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug.” Something else that King does incredibly well is write writers. “Write what you know” is such a common piece of writing advice, but it’s very effective. No one can write a middle-aged, white, male author quite like Stephen King. And I love what he has to say about writing as an art, as a vocation, as an addiction, through the actions and thought lives of his characters. I think Mike Noonan is one of his best in this regard. “The muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited.” King is also the, well, king of crafting small, creepy communities with deep, dark secrets. The TR in this book is no exception. There are a plethora of proverbial skeletons in this community’s metaphorical closet, and the people who populate the area will do just about anything to keep said skeletons hidden. I thought that the TR was very well fleshed out. The side characters were varied and interesting, the baddies were deeply disturbing, and the two main supporting characters, Mattie and Kyra, were absolutely lovely. “Dead people put on weight, it seems to me; both in their flesh and in our minds, they put on weight.” The mystery element of this book was great. And sincerely disturbing. It kept me guessing and involved to the very end, though I’ll confess that it did lag a bit around the middle. I think it could have lost a couple hundred pages and been all the better for it. Where I had issue with the book wasn’t a surprise to me. King does a lot of things really well, but writing sex scenes isn’t one of them. There were a few instances, and one nightmarish dream in particular, that made me both roll my eyes and wrinkle my nose in disgust. That was that largest contributing factor to this book being a 3.5 star read for me instead of a 4 star experience. “Any good marriage is secret territory, a necessary white space on society's map. What others don't know about it is what makes it yours.” Despite a few fumbles, Bag of Bones is a great story. I can see why it’s one that King himself particularly loves. It’s a compelling story with sympathetic characters in a very well-drawn setting. And I’ve very interested to see how it ties into the Dark Tower. While it’s not my favorite book he’s ever written, it’s definitely worth reading. You can find this review and more at Novel Notions.

Este livro deixou-me com sentimentos contraditórios... Por um lado adorei a escrita de Stephen King, especialmente a forma como constrói lentamente o ambiente de uma pequena cidade americana e como os pequenos detalhes se interligam. Por outro lado, estava à espera de uma história de terror a sério, mas a história nunca me assustou por aí além. E também achei que a história se alongou demasiado. Acho que teria gostado bastante mais deste livro se o tivesse encarado como um romance e não como um livro de terror, mas apesar disso gostei de o ler.