The first book I ever
got as a present was a novel by Stephen King. I was 13. Having heard so much
about the man and being secretly (13 was that
sort of age) afraid of the dark, I let fear run ahead of me and apprehended
every page with heavy, half-excited trepidation. As King himself puts it in
this new book, “wanting it to happen, hoping it wouldn’t”. And it didn’t. Well,
technically it did, but I wasn’t moved. By page 30, I was bored. By page 50, I
stopped reading altogether. Could be the intriguing vagueness of my expectations,
of course, but in the end what made the book’s horror so bland and ineffective
was its overstated physical nature. Like those badly dated Elm Street films, it
left little room for imagination.
Which is not to say that
I underestimate Stephen King in any way. Since that initial letdown, he has
equally shocked, terrified and amazed me – with the playful precision of his
style, with that eye for a detail, with his unending supply of plot twists and
horror tricks, with his uncanny ability to create atmosphere with minimal space
and means. However, I’ve been most impressed by books such as The Body – where he didn’t show you much
and all that he did do, all that suspense and trickery, was a mere façade for a
much bigger story.
Joyland is an amusement
park in North Carolina where a 21-year-old Devin Jones will work for the summer
of 1973. He lands a job as a carny and gets himself into a whole new world with
its new people, language and, yes, ghosts. One in particular – that of a young
girl murdered several years ago in the park’s horror house. Devin doesn’t take
the job for the money; what he really needs is to get away and over a certain
girl.
Few can beat Stephen
King in setting the scene and creating a world that, despite being so sinister
and full of suspense, feels somewhat wickedly attractive and almost warm. What does Devin Jones see? There’s
a lonely beach with a woman, a dog and a boy in a wheelchair. There’s wind.
There’s Howie the dog, the furry symbol of Joyland that every carny has to
impersonate. There are swarms of small kids with hot dogs. There are sweet and
friendly people like his landlady and his two new friends, and then there are
bastards and eccentrics, both amusing and not so much. There’s a girl in red.
There’s an old mystery that some discuss in hushed tones and some dismiss as
complete bullshit. It’s a beautiful, beautifully written book that knows what
it’s doing and does it expertly. The vibe is terrific. I could envision a great
film.
Despite a few brushes
with the supernatural, Joyland reads
like a murder mystery and even an old-fashioned detective story. What it really
is, though, is a coming-of-age tale that doesn’t so much tell you things as lets you into
that world. The transition is not smooth (is it ever?), and Devin Jones actually
shares the experience with you. It is totally worth it. Joyland is not quite a classic, but what a gripping, elegant little
powerhouse of a novel.
8/10
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