Book: Under the Dome
ISBN-13: 978-1439148501
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Genre: Science Fiction/Horror
Release: November 10, 2009
Length: 1,088 pages (Hardcover)
Rating: B+ (90 / 100)
Verdict
At first glance, Under the Dome is intimidatingly long. However, unlike earlier King’s doorstops, this story holds your attention from beginning to end, leaving you with the sensation of having just seen an excellent movie.
It’s a must for King fans, and a great introduction to King for readers who are typically of a more literary bent.
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Pros: Deeply engrossing. Enormous cast of highly believable characters. fast-paced. Most literary King novel yet.
Cons: Somewhat heavy-handed on the social commentary. Abrupt ending. Extremely long… (even if it doesn’t feel that way.)
Synopsis
In Brief: An invisible dome suddenly appears around the sleepy town of Chesters Mill, a dome that nothing but a trickle of air and water can penetrate. Over the course of the week that follows, all hell breaks loose and societal norms break down as the town’s used car dealer slowly secures his position as town dictator.
Official: On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens — town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing — even murder — to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.
Review
Under the Dome is easily Stephen King’s best novel in years. It feels like a reawakening, though I can’t for the life of me remember when my enthusiasm for King’s work began to wane. I only know that this is the most satisfied I’ve felt after finishing a Stephen King novel in longer than I can remember. What’s more, King not only re-establishes his mastery of the horror genre with this entry, he seems to have grown some previously unseen literary depth with the introduction of environmental allegories into his normal medley of horror themes.
That depth comes at the price of inches, though. Under the Dome weighs in at a thousand pages, and it looks even larger. It dominates whatever shelf it sits on, and it’s an unwieldy bundle of paper to haul about town for reading. It doesn’t feel long, though. In the afterword, Stephen King writes, “I tried to write a book that would keep the pedal consistently to the metal.” Well, he succeeded. Under the Dome reads like a short story, and it feels like a movie in its scope and narrative length. Given the decidedly bloated feel of King’s last few novels, that comes as a very pleasant surprise.
Despite a greater literary depth, a monstrous length, and considerably fewer fantasy elements than most of his previous works, Under the Dome is nonetheless every bit as gripping as anything King has ever written. The many layers of human emotion that King explores by way of his enormous cast of characters ensnares readers from page one even more effectively than the nail-biting suspense of his other works. Though his use of emotional entanglement rather than suspense has peeved many reviewers, who are claiming that this novel belongs in the literary section rather than the horror isle, the move goes a long way towards strengthening his already distinctive narrative voice. That Because, as much as horror fans may protest, a thousand pages of suspense just doesn’t play out as well as the trials and frustrations of characters readers genuinely care about. (Don’t believe me? Pick up a copy of The Stand sometime.)
And King does succeed in building characters readers care about. One of his greatest strengths as an author has always been the ability to cobble together complex working class characters, complete with flaws and foibles, and here, he demonstrates the full gamut of his skills. Under the Dome is populated with drug addicts, mad men, exuberant children, and just plain small town folk, all of whom feel as if they could walk right off the page.
The book’s only possible flaw is it’s ending. While King novels aren’t always are rarely happy, few are as abrupt as the ending of this, his forty-eight novel. After a thousand pages of build up, the final page fades to black like a big budget Hollywood film, leaving readers aching for closure. It just does not pay off with the kind of emotional resonance a reader expects from a book of this length.
Still, despite the abrupt ending, this novel leaves a reader with a distinct sensation of having survived an ordeal – in a good way. It’s a richly layered story of a town under pressure that is ultimately both emotionally stirring and thought provoking.
It’s definitely a great book to pick when you’ve got a lot of time occupy.
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Further Information
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