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11/22/63

Stephen King

Start date: January 1, 2022

Finish date: January 31, 2022

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What Members Thought

Mar 28, 2024 Michelle rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned-books

What a ride! It was hard not to marvel at the thought, research and resourcefulness that went into this book and the story. I admire it but I'm a little angry. I feel like he dangled hope in front of me like a carrot. I shall go and sulk now. ...more

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May 15, 2022 Abyssdancer (Hanging in there!) rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was a really tough book to finish … not only is it quite a lengthy tome to struggle through, it was rather indulgent with all the non-JFK details which only made the book feel longer ….

But I finished it … I finished it, and I’m happy to say I think I understand why this book concentrated on every storyline within its immensity … because this isn’t a book about JFK necessarily, but about nostalgia and memory and the lack of control we have over both …

Jake Epping becomes time traveler extraor This was a really tough book to finish … not only is it quite a lengthy tome to struggle through, it was rather indulgent with all the non-JFK details which only made the book feel longer ….

But I finished it … I finished it, and I’m happy to say I think I understand why this book concentrated on every storyline within its immensity … because this isn’t a book about JFK necessarily, but about nostalgia and memory and the lack of control we have over both …

Jake Epping becomes time traveler extraordinaire after Al, king of the Catburger in Lisbon Falls, Maine, bequeaths his diner and time portal to him in 2011 … this time portal always starts in September 1958 and only lasts for two minutes in the original time stream, but for the time traveler, any time spent in the past still adds up to the actual time spent in the past … so, Jake spends five years in the past, and has aged five years when he finally returns to the 2011 he effed up through his good intentions …

Before Al dies, he and Jake decide to conspire on preventing the assassination of JFK, and Al shares all his subversive homework on the doings and whereabouts of Lee Harvey Oswald leading up to the assassination … but ultimately all of the JFK storylines end up as a distraction … the true story is the life Jake leads as an aside while Lee Harvey Oswald builds up his resentment of the useless life he leads as a failed Communist …

Jake Epping becomes George Amberson in the past, and he sets off first to prevent the murder of the Dunning family on Halloween in 1958 … then he ends up in Florida for awhile, laying low until Lee Harvey Oswald defects from the Soviet Union … only George ends up pissing off the wrong bookie, and escapes to Texas before his house is firebombed …

And Texas is where Stephen King wants Jake/George to end up … it only took him 300 pages to get there … and then we settle in Jodie, Texas, a small town outside of Dallas where everything beautiful about the early 1960s mellows at the pace of a good vintage … high school football reigns supreme … people share casserole recipes and no one spikes the punch at the Sadie Hawkins dance and everyone claps when the high school librarian and the English teacher swing dance … I kept waiting for something spooky to happen, like someone would dump pigs blood on the DJ at the Sadie Hawkins dance or vampires would terrorize Jodie, Texas by sucking the blood of all those sweet virginal teens … but no, the story lingers on the blossoming romance between Jake/George and Sadie Dunhill … the romance is punctuated by two overly brutal violent acts and distracted by Jake/George’s excursions into the ghettoes of Dallas and Fort Worth to spy on Lee Harvey Oswald (oh yeah, remember that storyline?) …

And after hundreds of wholesome pages of small town life in the 1960s, during which Sadie is slashed and George is beaten to within an inch of his life, our heroic romantic couple spend only 90 pages actually preventing the assassination and Jake/George returns to a post-apocalyptic 2011 where nuclear holocausts span the globe and horror-of-all-horrors Maine has been sucked into Canada … but all Jake/George truly cares about is creating a past where Sadie can lead a long happy life, because … because he loves Sadie so much … hankie please!

And that, ultimately, is the point of this book … it’s not the humongous world-changing watershed moments in history that determine the quality of a life well led … it’s the small intimate memories that matter … like influencing a mediocre high school linebacker to try out for the school play and leading a theatrical life … like shaming the high school quarterback into never drinking again so he gets his full ride … like Lindy hopping with the school librarian and falling madly in live with her clumsiness and her honesty … like sneaking around to a secret bungalow and Lindy hopping in bed … white Americans have built up this incredible sense of nostalgia about pre-JFK assassination United States and this book captures those feelings in every detail … and the point of this book is not necessarily the thrilling adventures of stopping the most devious conspiracy ever to haunt the United States but to fall in love with the innocence of white middle-class Americans before the assassination of several nationwide leaders including Martin Luther King Jr and Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement …

Again, I will go on record as saying this book was difficult to finish … but I have to admire how lovingly King crafted the details of this story … how tenderly he built up the timeless romance of Jake/George and Sadie … and how admirable his intent was in recreating a watershed moment in American history … the title 11/22/63 was not intended by King to focus on only the assassination of JFK … it was the date when American innocence was assassinated, and this to me is truly King’s point in writing this story … ...more

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Dec 17, 2022 Crystal FloridaGrams Of3 rated it really liked it

Not going to lie but several parts of this book absolutely bored me. Another issue is US 1 in Florida is on the East coast and has never came near Tampa. But did love US 19 that I drive daily in there. But other than that it was a good book but I think some boring parts could've been dropped and learned more about the future. ...more

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