Format: Hardcover
Published by: Viking Adult
Pages: 704
ISBN: 9780451188465
Price: 1770 INR
Published in 1996, ‘Desperation’ by Stephen King is an intriguing story about several who, while travelling along the lonely Interstate 50, along the way to Nevada, are abducted and taken to a nearby town. With a deceptive name like Desperation, the town is home to Collie Entragian, the deputy of the mining town. This is the author’s 37th novel and he seems to have excelled himself, since the time of ‘The Shining’ and ‘Dead Zone’.
Being brought up on movies of this kind, where it is the children generally that are easy target in such situations, this book has David Carver, a kid who has an ability to commune with and receive guidance from God. He can also apparently perform miracles the like of providing an unending supply of food from a meagre proportion. Just like Jesus did with the bread. But as the course of the story is some seven hundred pages long, we only find out towards the end that miners at a digging site nearby had accidently broken into another dimension and released a creature who went by the name of ‘Tak’. Tak has the power to inhabit human bodies and seems to have done Desperation in through that manner.
That said, this book is not for the fainted-hearted. Gory scenarios with avid description as is the style of the author made this novel a trademark King. A dog hung on a tree, as vultures scavenge the remains. A cat nailed to a highway post. Evil possessions. At the same time, too much of something is a bad thing and there are times when you feel like the author’s overdoing it. A television-movie version of this book has also been made in 2006. Directed by Mick Harris with full cooperation by Stephen King, unfortunately it didn’t fare too well. A character by the name of John Edward Marinville, who is supposedly the literary lion of writing, seemed to remind me very strongly of Shane ‘Scarecrow’ Schofield (from the Scarecrow series by Matthew Reilly).
Also, if you are one of those readers with bustling imagination, that helps you recreate the whole thing happening in your mind, then you’re in for a treat. His uncanny knack for detail is something which is present in most of his books, but he seems to have upped the scale with this one. King manages, for the most part, to keep the tension on a constant throughout the novel, which makes it one hell of an uneasy read. Some sequences are somewhat bizarre, and others are bluntly offensive, although this is only what you’d expect from a novel such as this: it’s not meant to be easy reading after all.
Rating: 8/10
If you find the book interesting, buy from Amazon or Flipkart here:
|
|