This was bit of a messy book that I ultimately enjoyed very much. King takes a lot of smaller pieces (racism, homophobia, cannibalism, the fear of aging, COVID, poetry and writing and the meaning of art) and smushes them together in this little book following Holly Gibney, a character some people love and some people (inexplicably) hate. I happen to love her. I thought this was a great showcase for Holly, even if it wasn’t perfect, and there were small moments I might have tweaked a little.
We are mid-pandemic here, and Holly’s mother has just died of COVID (she refused to get vaccinated, which is really making the anti-vaxxer crowd warm to this book, I tell you). Her business partner has recently come down with it, too, and Holly being Holly, she is EXTREMELY vigilant about taking care of herself (oh god I cringed when she went in for the elbow bumps; I absolutely refused to partake IRL). Then the mother of missing young woman hires Holly to find her daughter a sort of last resort. The more Holly and Jerome look into things, though, it seems like the woman’s daughter is only the latest in a string of missing persons who are now likely also murder victims.
Of course, we as the reader know from the start what is happening to these people, because we watch it happen to one of the first victims in the very first chapter. A pair of elderly professors have been kidnapping and eating people, mostly minorities, in order to stave off the effects of old age*. The bits from the POVs of the victims were the most harrowing parts of the story. These are some of King’s scariest bad guys, in my opinion, because of what they represent. The old, fearful and greedy, preying on the young and taking their future from them . . . hmmm, sounds like social commentary. That these villains also display signs of tribalism, elitism and bigotry is also not a coincidence. The fact that it takes place in a socially isolating pandemic, same again.
*Up to you whether or not you think this is an actual supernatural element in the story or all in their heads.
This is a mystery thriller book with horror elements, just to be clear. It is a crime novel. Not a horror. As such, even though I loved it, this book should not have won the Horror category this year in the Goodreads Choice Awards. Boo on Goodreads. (Things being miscategorized REALLY bothers me. I will be thinking about this forever. Especially since there were SO many good horror books this year that should have taken the prize instead. The “prize.”)
Weirdly, my favorite part of this book was the subplot with Jerome’s younger sister, Barbara, an up and coming poet who gains an apprenticeship with a lauded and famous elderly poet, who acts as a foil for the elderly cannibals. Their conversations, between the oldest generation and the youngest, were the highlight of the book, especially when they were about writing and art:
“This is not psychiatry,” Olivia says. “It is not therapy. It is poetry, my dear. The talent was there before awful things happened to you, it came with the original equipment just as your brother’s did, but talent is a dead engine. It runs on every unresolved experience—every unresolved trauma, if you like—in your life. Every conflict. Every mystery. Every deep part of your character you find not just unlikeable but loathsome.” . . . “Keep it,” she says. “Keep it as long as you can. It’s your treasure. You will use it up and then you will have to rely on the memory of the ecstasy you once felt, but while you have it, keep it. Use it.”
This is definitely a book worth reading, and I like that it shows where Uncle Stevie’s head is at re: aging, a natural thing for a writer in his 70s to be thinking and making art about. I wouldn’t let the negative reviews of this one sway you too much. It’s worth reading.