Fairy Tale | Book Chatter

Fairy Tale
By Stephen King
Scribner, 9781668002179, September 2022, 608pp.

The Short of It:

My prediction is that lovers of fantasy will absolutely love Fairy Tale. However, that is not me.

The Rest of It:

Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for that world or ours. ` Indiebound

Although the fantasy elements didn’t win me over, the main character and dog did. Charlie Reade is probably right up there with my favorite King characters. And Radar, his aging canine sidekick, made me like this book even though the fantasy parts didn’t score any points with me. The one thing that is always true, is that King is a heck of a storyteller. He pulls me right in and I keep drinking his Kool-aid. Willingly.

While Charlie is caring for his injured neighbor, he stumbles across a mysterious shed, hears some strange sounds and becomes all too aware of how Radar reacts to those noises. Who is in that shed? What is in that shed and what could his neighbor Mr. Bowditch be hiding?

I may be the only reader to notice this but I found some similarities between Fairy Tale and Murakami’s Killing Commendatore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. At one point Fairy Tale felt very familiar to me and yet it wasn’t at all what I expected from King. It was at this point that I began to skim a little. It’s a chunk of a book and it felt a tad repetitive but I also wanted to finish it.

Have you read it? What are your thoughts? King fans might be surprised by this one but fans of fantasy might find a new favorite in Fairy Tale.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

The Dutch House
By Ann Patchett
Harper, 9780062963673, September 2019, 352pp.

The Short of It:

A dark fairy tale of sorts told in a very modern way. Beautifully written and filled with flawed characters.

The Rest of It:

When Cyril buys a beautiful house for his wife, Elna, he believes it to be the most romantic gesture a man can make towards his wife, but what The Dutch House represents to Elna, is a lifestyle that she can never rise to, one of wealth and opulence. Coming from a convent, her needs are few, or so it seems but after years of living in the house and trying to raise her daughter Maeve and her son Danny, she abandons them for India to work with the poor.

This abandonment is devastating to Maeve and Danny but what ends up being even more devastating is their new stepmother, Andrea. Suddenly, Maeve and Danny are forced to rely on one another and the insular world they build to protect themselves from reality, affects them down the line and impacts their relationships with others.

This was not a perfect book. Some things could have been explored more fully but as I was reading it, I felt the presence of that house. This is an excellent example of a house portrayed as a character in the story. It’s pulsing with life even when lives are falling apart. It’s immune to decay, which isn’t the case for the families who have lived inside it. To some, it’s glittering and beautiful and grand and to others, it’s imposing and intimidating and a reminder of what could never be. I LOVED this aspect of the story. So much conflict in these characters and so much to ponder.

I only keep books which I have loved or ones which I think could be re-read and loved again over and over and The Dutch House falls into that category. I highly recommend it.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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