A Good Read

I have just finished reading Under the Dome, a novel by Stephen King. Now, I am by no means a Stephen King aficionado: I have read only one other book by him (Christine) although I have seen a few films based on his stories (Christine, Carrie, The Shawshank Redemption, Misery). This is probably because, although many might argue, King is often categorised as a ‘horror’ writer or, at a stretch, a fantasy writer, two genres of which I am not a massive fan. However, ever since UtD was published in 2009, I had been intrigued by the premise (a typical small US town suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the country by, in effect, being placed under a vast unbreakable bell-jar: nothing can get in and nothing can get out) and wondered where he would take the story from that starting point. Having now finished the book, I am sorry that it took me quite so long to get around to reading it.

The story seems to work on several levels. Imagine Kafka’s novels Metamorphosis and The Trial but, instead of poor Gregor alone waking up in an alien state or K’s bewilderment in trying to deal with a faceless tyranny, a whole community is turned upside down in a second with the small municipal powerbases, fairly meaningless in normal day-to-day life, suddenly taking on sinister and very significant meaning for some unfortunate members of that community. It creates a microcosm, a petri-dish, if you will, in which we can study: the potential global environmental disaster that we fossil fuel addicts face playing out to its terrifying conclusion; an America where resources are becoming scarce and and what the citizens in control of those dwindling stocks will do to retain that control; a neat riff on the Lord of the Flies story, ripped from its Pacific island setting and plonked down in Maine (where, unsurprisingly, the outcomes are broadly similar); a little fun with fundamentalist Christians and those who have lost their faith; and the idea of ‘worlds-within-worlds’ (if we tread on an ant, what if there is something 'out there' that sees us as mere ants....). It is a long book and it has a massive cast of characters (sometimes a little difficult to keep track of) but it never really sags. King says in the ‘Author’s Note’ that he wanted to write a “pedal-to-the-metal” novel and he has certainly achieved this aim. Becuase the timescale in which events happen is relatively short, it feels pressurised, claustrophobic, sweaty - all the feelings that his characters feel as the tensions and hardships ratchet up across the course of a week. It definitely keeps the pages turning without resorting to every chapter being two pages long (Dan Brown - I’m looking at you!) and I like the fact that a song (James McMurty’s ‘Small Town’) and a key line from it (“It’s a small town and we all support the team”) is referenced several times. This despite the fact that C&W music is not the main force in town: the Christian radio station WCIK (or "Jesus Radio”) and its 24-hour diet of hymns and gospels dominates the town’s airwaves. The fact that the entire operation is automated and on an endless loop is a comment in itself...

I wouldn’t call it a criticism but, for some, the descriptions of some of the deaths and injuries inflicted by various weapons are gleefully gory. That said, King is writing in the horror genre so - hey! - you know what to expect and what you do or do not like. Similarly, with such a big book having been written in a comparatively short time (480 days, apparently), it does mean that there are going to be a few clunky or pulpy lines in there but, overall, I’d still say that, in literary worth, it is head and shoulders above anything else that you might choose to pick up at an airport for holiday reading (although, given its length and that it starts with a plane crash, maybe it wouldn’t be an ideal airport purchase). In a plot that was intriguing, well-paced and thought through, there were plenty of good lines, some that made me laugh and some that brought a tear. That’s all I ask from a good story.

By way of an experiment, about half-way through the book, I watched the first episode of the TV series ‘based on’ UtD. Apart from the fact that the book and the show share a name, a few characters have the same names as characters in the book (although, bizarrely, are not the characters they share their names with) and there is a dome, it is a completely different kettle of fish. Apparently, it is just about to start its third season, so the ‘pressurised’ feel of the book is definitely not something the TV producers have aimed to reproduce.