Stephen King
Hodder & Stoughton, 30 October 2018
HB, 135pp
Another book I bought during the year and hadn't got round to.
Stephen King's fictional universe contains many wonders, and more horrors. This book - one of a number set in his idealised US rural community of Castle Rock - belongs firmly with the former. Scott Carey, a jobbing web designer who's getting on a bit but not ready to unplug his keyboard just yet, begins to be concerned about his falling weight.
His old friend Dr Ellis shares these concerns - falling weight may mean any number of bad things - but also shares Carey's bafflement... while his weight may be falling his body size isn't. Instead he simply seems to be getting lighter. And so it goes - what will happen when has no weight at all?
The fun of this book is that King doesn't try and explain what's going on, Carey doesn't become the centre of a Stranger Things style investigation and there doesn't turn out to be some bigger picture here. He just loses his weight, and the book focusses squarely on the consequences of that. I can see that - especially as this is a very short book - some readers will hate that, think there should be so much more, but there you are. For me I delighted in the simplicity of the story.
There actually is more, of course - Carey's life becomes entangled with his efforts to befriend a lesbian couple who have moved into Castle Rock and are having trouble persuading the somewhat reactionary locals (I don't like the usage 'conservative' here) to accept them. Challenged to justify his own attitude, he realises he hasn't been as supportive as he might have been and tries to help. That doesn't go too well, and Carey's perception that he has limited time - that reducing weight must have an endpoint - pushes him to try and mend things. It's a nice juxtaposition of the everyday and the fantastical, showing, if nothing less, how issues of social justice can be tackled in fantastical literature - something that ought not to be controversial but in some quarters apparently is.
A fun and thought provoking addition to King's fictional domain (and mentioning Pennywise in relation to Hallowe'en celebrations raised a smile too...)
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