By: Stephen KingAlthough I continue to despise and disrespect King for his big cop-out at the end of lengthy The Dark Tower series, I've continued for some unexplained reason to read his tangential novels -Despiration, The Regulators, and now Hearts in Atlantis. This time, however, I was not let down.
HiA tells the story of an ensemble cast of characters as they experience the various turning points of their lives before, during, and after the Vietnam war. It wasn't the book I was expecting at all, because the trailer for the the movie is only the first story from the book, which is odd because it takes its name from the second part - I wonder how they explain that?
Anyway, each story is connected by some character and the changing world of the 1960s. The characters are each affected both directly and indirectly by the other stories of the book, and events effect each other between stories like ripples in water. Although I began this book for the Dark Tower connection, that is only a small and tangential element. Instead, the bulk of the book isn't concerned with mythical gunslingers and quests, but is a very in depth and heartfelt look at how the 1960s and the Vietnam War twisted and changed the lives of those it affected. Although many war stories do the same, the reason that this one is so effective is that almost none of it takes place in the war itself- although its presence is felt - it looms in the distance in the first story at the begining of the 60s, hangs like a cloud over the second story, as it begins in full, and the last stories see the lasting effects on a few of the characters years later.
This is perhaps the most insightful of King's books, one particular passage that has stayed with me remarks about the college students as the war is raging. Even though we look back and think of that time as people fighting in the war or against the war, at the time, many students simply kept their heads in their history books while history was happening all around them, choosing to ignore.
HiA is inconsistent- and sometimes this is a plus and sometimes its a minus- a plus because it doesn't fit into any mold of demanding connections everywhere in every story and thus creating too false a reality, but also a minus because we're left with some characters and ideas that seem incomplete. Overall though, the pluses outweigh the minuses, and it weighs in as my favorite King book so far.
