This short book was pretty cool, and I am glad we got to read something by Stephen King. Right off the bat, I liked the title. The story is about a werewolf and it starts at the beginning of a year. It runs through the cycle of months, Jan-Dec. Add to that the fact that the antagonist changes into a werewolf during the full moon (like all werewolves do), and you have another cycle. Though we only see one cycle of a year in the story, its still part of a cycle. Twelve cycles of the moon and one cycle of the year. I find themes that have multiple tie-ins like that interesting.
The story itself started off real slow. We got a victim, we got the werewolf, we got a killing. Repeat. Each time was a different person, different family. It wasn't until about May or June when we finally received pieces that really tied in to other pieces enough that we could extrapolate a story out of it. I was beginning to get worried that it was just going be twelve very loosely related killings. But the second half of the book was much better. Once Marty put the werewolf's eye out with the firecracker, we finally had a real story. Marty survived. And he knew the whoever the werewolf was only had one eye. At that point, I started enjoying the story. The Halloween discovery, the letters, the righteous priest coming to grips with the fact that he was the werewolf, and then trying to justify it. It became a decent story at that point. Surprisingly, the ending did not have much of a surprise to it. Uncle Al made the silver bullets, Marty shot the werewolf. All just like the reader figured it might. I was a little disappointed with that. I'd like to have seen one last surprise by Mr. King, some twist I hadn't thought of. Perhaps if Marty's sister was the one who had the crush on the reverend, instead of the barmaid Elise who sang in the choir, and then at the end, Marty sees a bit of wolf fur under his sister's door or something. I don't know, just something that would have made me say "Woah!" And whatever happened to Elise? She didn't even reappear in the story. That bit of info on her having a crush on Lowe was a bit of a Chekhov's gun.
I would have liked to have see a little bit more about the monster itself. When Lowe had the dream about the werewolf, it was King giving the reader the hint that he was the werewolf. It was pretty heavy-handed. And that's okay, but if he was ready to let us figure that out so early, then why not let us then really jump into Lowe's character, and the werewolf, even more. Give us cravings. Give us explanation of how he came to be a werewolf. Give us more reason to understand beyond any doubt that he is the werewolf, and not just rely on the missing eye. I'd like to have seen wolfish features. Cravings for meat. Maybe a pack mentality with other church members. As it was, the werewolf was just a simple werewolf. And Lowe was a typical man who turned into a werewolf and didn't know it at first but figured it out. This was were I found the story lacking. Perhaps it was just because there was an implied limit on story length, given how this story was written with the illustrator. I don't know. But I could have used more monster. My favorite part was when Lowe felt the "strange, trapped feeling... the way he imagines a fox must feel when it realizes that the dogs have somehow chased it into a cul-de-sac." That was Lowe fully accepting what he was, and thinking like the monster. I wanted more of that.
Given its short length, this book is definitely worth the read. But I think anyone expecting King at his finest would be let down.
I thought we got a fair amount of the monster in this one. Now that you say it though, we don't get much of Lowe and his werewolf background. Yeah, he figures out it's him, and sure that is character progression, but also, it's not satisfying to most readers. I agree, considering it's readability and short length, I would tell someone to read it if they asked. I think King had a really good style but lacked in giving the readers the explanations and actions they crave when reading a werewolf story.
ReplyDeleteElise was such a minor character, I forgot about her until I read your post. If I remember right, she ended up leaving town because she felt like she needed to due to all the stuff going on? (My e-book was sent back to Amazon so I could get another open slot in my Kindle Prime. Though I thought I paid for it? A matter of zero importance to you or for this discussion.)
I liked the whole idea King had with one overall story broken into several short ones that link it as a whole. I also think there was some very good detail in the writing that put images and motion in the reader's heads. However, I will say, I agree that it did fall short as a werewolf story off the mere fact, we don't get much about the monster. We don't experience the monster outside of terrorizing people. The narrator was omniscient, so I do not see why we couldn't have gotten a bit more. Even if the desired length was for it to stay short, he could have cut a lot out. For example, the scene with Elise bar tending and chatting could be cut to fill with other things the omniscient narrator can bring to a story.
-Alexis
Wow, I completely forgot about Elise up until just now. I agree, though, I would have loved to see some sort of twist at the ending, like maybe a hint that Elise or someone else is a werewolf now, too. Isn't that one of the best parts about werewolves? That a bite converts another to their kind? Maybe Marty should have gotten bitten—that would have been a great twist! I was okay not knowing how the Reverend became a werewolf given what a short novel it was, and I actually enjoyed puzzling out his identity rather than having it told to me outright. The first few stories were a bit of a rinse-and-repeat, but I did think King did a good job of changing it up after that by showing the werewolf's transformation before he killed Alfie so that we got our first hint that the beast was familiar to most people in town. Even so, I thought those first few stories were important for the set-up because they showed the fear of "it could be any of us" starting to set in. All in all, though, I agree. Enjoyable enough, but not King at his best.
ReplyDeleteYou had a lot of comments that I had about the book, but I am the opposite and I don't like it. I think the main reason I really did not like the story was the beginning, since outside of school readings I will put a book down that isn't gripping within the first few pages. I stated in my own post that one of the things I kind of let slide was the plainness of the werewolf. I felt it was acceptable because it's an older book, but now looking at how Marty knows about killing werewolves with silver bullets, I feel like there really SHOULD have been a twist at the end, and that makes the novella all the more disappointing to me.
ReplyDelete