As with every Stephen King book I read, I approached this one with high hopes, and, as always, I came away with those expectations having been met. Joyland is a horror/crime thriller novel, which centres around loveable, kind, Devin Jones, a student who gets unknowingly embroiled into a decades old unsolved murder mystery when he learns that the ghost of a girl who was murdered still stalks around Joyland, a theme park where he has taken a summer job. As Devin gets drawn further into the park, simply through hard work, skill and determination, he makes friends with a lot of the other employees, and, as his time in Heaven’s Bay, the city where Joyland is situated, continues, he makes friend’s with Annie and Mike Ross, a boy with muscular dystrophy, and his mother. His relationship with Mike is one of my favourite parts of the novel. It is, at some times, largely expositional, and at others it is tense and used for dramatic effect, which leads to one of my favourite moments in the novel: one where mike warns Devin about a future (spoilery) event, by seemingly speaking to him purely through telepathy. King always balances natural and supernatural perfectly, and he manages that excellently in this book, as one would, of course expect him to. The line, as with a lot of his writing, is blurred between life and death, and that is, in my opinion, an extremely difficult task that King accomplishes with ease. At the end of the book, a principal character gets shot, and dies; but the way King writes about the character’s body after death makes the reader; or me, at least; feel as though the character might not be dead, and is still alive within the tattered body, having not passed, as is similar to the theme in a lot of King's books. The specific way that he handles death in that character is indicative of the way he handles death throughout the novel: as though it doesn’t exist. There are people we can see, who walk around and talk to us all, and there are people who only mediums can see, but everyone always lives. This is a key theme in the novel, and it is expressed and delivered extremely impressively. Another good theme is the way that King handles life, as well as death. He approached this book from the point of view of a man who has lived a reasonably long, and very full, life. This attitude is seen as Devin narrates the novel, and he regularly comments on the non-stop march of time, and how that march allowed him to heal from the events that happen to him within the novel. This cynicism is a refreshing perspective when compared to other novels which centre around nineteen year-old individuals. Overall, I would wholeheartedly recommend this novel, it has an intriguing story, which incorporates supernatural themes effortlessly, without making the reader ostensibly question what it is that they're reading. The characters are all developed incredibly well, and all the dynamics between the characters, as well as their secrets, are shown just enough to give the reader cause to generate their own ideas and guesses as to what will happen at the end of the novel.
pixelskylines
stormborns