Adult Horror
"He fed her, then he took her on the Carolina Spin--a slow ride, you know, easy on the digestion--and then he took her into Horror House. They went in together, but only he came out."
I first saw Joyland on a picked over table. Clean Sweep had come to a successful end. Now we workers were to clear out the ice hockey arena, not by making a gazillion trips to the dumpster, but by getting the leftover merch to organizations that could use it. I was at one point tasked with sorting trade books from textbooks so that someone from Kiwanis could take the former for their later in the season auction/yard sale.
Joyland almost went to Kiwanis. It was a slightly battered paperback with a cover featuring a horror stricken red haired girl in an extremely skimpy dress. It looked like something from an old time true crime magazine. I was about to place it with the other trade books 📚 when I saw that it was by Stephen King. So it went home with me.
About half way through I glanced at the publishing date, convinced that it was one of King's earlier works only to see that it came out in 2013 when he was mostly cranking out really complex works that I wouldn't want to read on a dark and maybe stormy home alone night. The King opus it reminds me most of is Stand By Me.
The story itself is set in 1973. Devin is a college student who didn't want to spend his summer working dining "mopping cafeteria floors and loading elderly Commons dishwashers with dirty plates". So he decided to take a summer jack of all trades job at a theme park: Joyland. It's a family friendly place where Howie the Happy Hound greets visitors and many of the rides are child size. But it has its one dark corner, a ride on which a guy slit his date's throat, dumped her body, and walked. The murder was never solved; the ride is said to be haunted.
On his way walking down the beach ⛱️ to and from work Devin regularly sees a little boy in a wheelchair, Mike, his mother, Annie, and their dog, Milo.
"He looked very sick. His smile was healthy enough, though. Whether I was coming or going, he always flashed it. Once or twice he even flashed me the peace sign, and I sent it right back. I had become part of his landscap, just as he had become part of mine."
Annie remains immune to Devin's charms until one day after the end of the Joyland season. (Devin is staying behind to help clean, perform repairs on, and shut down the park). He helps her fly the kite Mike is desperate to see soaring through the air.
Mike has Duchenne's muscular dystrophy exacerbated by a recent bout of pneumonia. He has come to terms with the fact that he doesn't have long to live and wants to make the most of the time he has left. Annie at least partly believes that she can cheat the grim reaper by protecting him enough.
The suspense lies not only in the two strands of the story eventually melding into a horrific conclusion, but in human feelings such as the tension between Mike and Annie and Devin's reaction to being dumped long distance by the girl he thought he'd spend the rest of his life with. It's now tied with Stand By Me as my favorite Stephen King novel. If you enjoy the Horrormeister's lower key offerings I believe that you'll find Joyland to be the cat's pajamas.
On a purrrsonal note, well, the work week just starting feels like it will be a low key one for me. I won't be running any workshops until next week. Thursday I can raid the Black Bear Exchange for swap shop clothes and deliver them. Tuesday if the weather cooperates I can get in time at Orono Public Library and Community Garden. The other things I need to do are pending on my ability to contact other people. So it looks as though I'll have a quiet week and make good progress on my own book and on reorganizing my studio and then the rest of the house. (Jules)
Which means she'll be home a lot. My favorite kind of week. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes you, our valued readers, with hopes that your week is starting 😀 👌 👍 😊 off well.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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