Review: "The Dead Zone," by Stephen King

The Dead Zone is a reminder that King writes beautiful literature. Just like he's done with novels like The Green Mile, Lisey's Story, perhaps even Gerald's Game, King writes a literary heartbeat into The Dead Zone that I did not see coming. There is almost always a supernatural aspect to a King novel, it's sort of his staple. But supernatural motifs don't necessarily mean a book shouldn't be considered literature. The Great Debate on whether Commercial fiction - which is, normally, to say that an author sells millions of copies per release of a book - has it's place on the Literature table. And I'm not here to take a side definitively, but I will say that there seem to be exceptions at the very least. King, no doubt, has churned out some of these exceptions (how could you not when you've released some 60 novels in your career?), and The Dead Zone would be my choice for an exception. I mean, we need not look very far to see that some of the most award-winning literary books have supernatural elements themselves. Look at two of the last three Man Booker prize winner, Lincoln in the Bardo and A Brief History of Seven Killing, both of which deal with the after-life in a very Stephen King-like manner. Anyway, I digress. This book surprised me in a few ways. The biggest surprise, to me, was the language. I've read nearly all of King's earliest works, and this one strikes me as quite a departure from his normal language. It was still King at it's roots, but there was a twist to the way he structured many of the sentences and paragraphs. The writing, although well done, isn't as fluid and stringy as King's normally is. At least, not for the entire novel. He used more stunted, short sentences to create a pacier narrative. Then he slowed it down and gave us lengthy paragraphs. The net effect was that the book has a sort of heartbeat to it - slow fast slow fast slow, and so on. The main character Johnny Smith (such a King name for a character) is about as interesting and complex a character as King has written. One of my favourites, actually. I really enjoyed the roller-coaster journey the character took. His storyline reminded me a lot of a more modern one that many of us might be more familiar with - think Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Say whaaaat? Yes. Johnny Smith is well in love before he falls into his coma, and then when he awakes, the woman he loved has moved on from him but never truly fallen out of love with him. Sound familiar? Both of these similar stories (Dead Zone and Cast Away) had the same effect on me, in that I was heartbroken for our main character and genuinely felt that sense of longing for him. How helpless of a feeling to have lost the love of your life not because of your choosing, but because of something entirely out of your control. How helpless. And wrapping up this storyline was an ending to break even the strongest heart in the world. King has done it before and will always be one of the best at writing a nostalgic ending for the ages. He did this in The Dead Zone and seemed to draw the tears right out of my eyes. As an added benefit, to add a certain flavour to the story, we have the psychic elements to Johnny's existence. These are neat, and add a bit of drama and excitement to the story. But the sweet spot for this book was it's characters. King is known for creating good characters, but he has occasionally lost them in his supernatural stuff. Not this time. The characters drive this novel to the finish line. If I had one point of criticism, it would be that I felt King strayed too far away from the 'bent-politician' plot of this book. He introduced Greg Stillson early on in the book, and then departed from this storyline for almost the entire book, until the end, which is when we find our way back to it, which is when King tosses up a bang of an ending. But I would have liked that storyline to weave into the entire novel more often. It felt sort of an afterthought to me. The result of leaving this storyline for most of the book is that it almost felt a bit forced, as opposed to the other main storylines in the book (his teaching young Chuck, his relationship with his father and with Sarah) which felt more natural. I would definitely recommend this book to you. It is perhaps more relevant today than ever. Read it and find out for yourself. Onward.