William Gagliani

Where were you during the '60s? Whether you served, marched, or missed it all, something in this major new work by Stephen King will put a lump in your throat. Though he is known as the King of Horror, King's real talent has always been describing the horror people perpetrate on each other. He may use the supernatural as a catalyst, but King's best work is about people who remind us of ourselves because they sound like us and think like us, even when at their worst.

Structured as two novellas and three short stories, Hearts in Atlantis is nevertheless a novel in which some strangeness what King refers to as the Ray Bradbury kind of childhood makes an appearance and leaves its mark, but cannot rival what the '60s wrought on an entire generation. Bobby, Carol and Sully-John grow up and grow apart in startling ways during the summer of 1960, helped along toward their destinies by a trio of bullies, an eerie older man, and the Low Men in Yellow Coats who hunt him. The story "Hearts in Atlantis" begins with hearts you can break, moves on to a ruthlessly destructive card game which turns its obsessed players into sheep, and finally wraps around again to flesh-and-blood broken hearts. Pete Riley tells how knowing Carol for a short time changes him from a kid with a Goldwater bumper sticker to a gassed-out peacenik and what it does to Carol the activist, whom he loves and loses in a few short weeks during this time of social upheaval. These two novellas form both the bulk of the book and its emotional center.

In "Blind Willie," one of the bullies now a Vietnam-haunted vet finds a certain penance in his bizarre daily ritual that both embraces and overturns '80s greed. "Why We're in Vietnam" follows Sully-John through the dark remains of the war, to his death in the present day. And the funeral in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling" brings the book full-circle, with an understated emotion that will take you by surprise and wring out your heart with its sad yet redeeming inevitability. You will see Stephen King in a new light. Read this moving, heartfelt modern tragedy and weep for our lost conscience.

Bill Gagliani is a librarian and writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Facing your demons

Review by William Gagliani

by William Gagliani

When a drunk Ted Conway is fired from his last-chance hotel job, his ever-patient wife Janet finally decides it may be time to take their three children and leave him. Ted has spiraled to a point where even his perfect teenage twins, Jared and Kim, can't stand him.

But then Ted's Aunt Cora, who never much liked him, dies in the Shreveport sanitarium which had been her home for years and inexplicably leaves Ted the family mansion, along with its bloody history of murder and mysterious disappearances. Another chance? Janet allows Ted to convince her that he can stop drinking, and that the mansion can be converted into an inn. Unfortunately, the Conway name is despised in St. Albans, and the new Conways meet opposition right from the start, not least from an obsessed Catholic priest, and also from Jake Cumberland, last descendant of the voodoo-practicing Conway servants.

Suddenly Janet detects a change in Ted, who becomes the husband she's missed for years. But why has Jared picked up all of Ted's worst qualities? Why has Jared and Kim's Twin Thing suddenly been silenced? And what of Father MacNeill's secretive attempt to deny Ted the zoning variance he needs to remodel the crumbling mansion?

Set aside superficial comparisons to Stephen King's classic The Shining it's Jared, the son, who appears to have succumbed to the mansion's supernatural influence. And the results are quite different. John Saul may not break any new ground here, but he has fashioned a slick, competent thriller in which deftly drawn characters must face the demons in their own lives to conquer that which claims the family's souls. That the list of survivors remains unpredictable to the end is testament to Saul's experienced approach, which has resulted in almost two dozen novels, many of them bestsellers. Not known as a stylist, Saul uses a straightforward, uncluttered voice to good effect. Told with narrative verve from a sliding point of view, and with a penchant for realistic teenage dialogue, The Right Hand of Evil is gripping and fast-paced.

Bill Gagliani is a librarian and writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.