11/22/63- Stephen King

As my first Stephen King novel ever, I wasn’t sure what to expect from 11/22/63. The fact that it had a reputation as being different from his other ones, I admit was part of the reason I was interested in reading it. I’m not really one for books like It and Carrie. However, if that’s a broad generalization on my part, and more of his books are like this one, perhaps I’ll be reading more of King in the future.

11/22/63 is kind of an oddball book. Not that that’s a bad thing, by any means. Jake, the main character, is a teacher confronted with an interesting choice: if you could go into the past (via an anomaly in time) to change anything, what would it be? Along with some help from a supporting character, obviously, Jake chooses to go after Lee Harvey Oswald and attempt to save JFK.  With 850 pages, multiple trips into the past, and timeline reboots, I’ll make the comment that it was just a bit too long. There are entire portions of the book that are changed and made irrelevant, and though I understand their importance in the overall storyline, I wish they had been a little briefer. That’s my only complaint though.

In the long run 11/22/63 was an interesting and very good book. I really enjoyed the time that Jake spent in the past, living his life until it was time to change history, and also the ripples that he inadvertently causes. It’s a cool concept. What if JFK had never been shot? How would life change? Without giving anything away, I’ll just say that the dilemmas that Jake encounters are very thought provoking.

This is another solid 4- very good and worth reading again. If it wasn’t so long I probably wouldn’t mind owning it. And like I said, maybe I’ll have to look into more of Stephen King’s books.