4 in 1

Sorry, but I had to stop for a little lunch there..... was absolutely starving.
So.... This is the final one left to review and it is a corker!


#### SPOILER ALERT ####


Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King
I loved this one! It is not one but four stories that are all connected because of the people involved. At the end of all of it I kind of got the feeling that there was some over arching meaning to all the stories and that there was some kind of philosophy or moral on life in there somewhere but I feel like I never quite got there completely but this is what I did get: There are themes of friendship, of guilt, of strength and madness in numbers, about being able to do more than humanly possible against all the odds, there is loss and love and great courage. Later on there is the loss of a familiar life to be exchanged for one in which you have to face the horrors of war and the effects of the war of those involved in it. It seems that in every situation there are those who put themselves in it and those who stand on the sidelines.
In the first story we meet Bobby Garfield, his mum and Bobby's friends Carol Ann and S-J. We also get to know a bit about the bully boys in the area and about what the average American kid gets up to on his time off from school. And... we meet Ted! Ted is great, I actually want a Ted in my life. He talks books and he knows his stuff!!! Shame he seems to be some kind of alien. Bobby does not have an easy life with his mum. she is bitter towards his dead father, she is tight with money and generally busy trying to make a career. Yet she also seem very tragic. She has managed to get herself into a situation that she is not sure she can get out of and she ends up getting really hurt, mentally and physically. The best thing in this story is the relationship between Ted and Bobby. Ted seems to be hiding from low men and he drafts in Bobby to keep a look out for them. But, Ted is not all that he seems he can do some weird stuff and he talks about some weird stuff as well. Bobby kind of doesn't believe in all the stuff  Ted tells him but decides to go along with it anyway. Some of the highlights from this story are the scene where Carol Ann gets hurt and the aftermath of it, the visit to the pool hall by Ted and Bobby and Bobby trying to save Ted.
In the second story we lose sight of Bobby but not of Carol Ann. She turns up as the long distance girlfriend of S-J and the closer by girlfriend of Pete who is the main character of the next story. Pete is trying to make things work at university but he seems to be quite fond of cards and gets distracted by that quite a bit.. then he gets distracted by Carol Ann. Whilst Pete is trying not to flunk out of all his classes Carol Ann is becoming involved with the protests against the Vietnam war. She is not quite sure why but she knows it has something to do with a boy she knew when she was younger, Bobby. He did something and did something marvellous, he did not stand idly by and watch it happen. He took action. Apart from a few protests at uni and the incident with the guy with the crutches it seems that not a lot happens in this story apart form the fact the battle lines are drawn even in uni at who is pro and anti war.
Then we get to the next story. I have to be honest.... I did not quite know what to make of this one. It is about a guy who turns out to be one of the boys who hurt Carol Ann called William Shearman. He seems to have created some convoluted life for himself where he pretends to have an office and a successful job but actually begs for money on street corners and he is quite good at it. Initially it looks like he pretends to be blind but then actually seems to be bind for a certain number of hours a day. Not sure how that one works? The main thing that seems to occupy Mr Sherman's mind is how to atone for the pain he caused when he was little. It is like he thinks that his actions in the past turned Carol Ann into who she became and that him getting her hurt is what made her a anti war protester, and that is it what got her killed. If only he knew...
In the next tale we meet S-J again, or as he is actually known, John Sullivan. He's all grown up and is off to attend a funeral of one of the guys he served with in Vietnam. Turns out he also met our Mr Shearman there again so it links nicely back to the previous story. He also met some friends of our boy Pete and it is good to see that the worse ones turned out no better than I expected. When at the funeral he gets talking to one of his old friends and they reminisce about the war. However, Mr Sullivan has his own mementos of the war. He has a little old lady that travels with him and seems to remind him every so often of the pain a hurt the American soldiers caused her and her fellow villagers. Sullivan has his own demons to fight in the shape of his personal ghost. However, S-J seems to have done okay after the war. Successful car dealer and plenty of money in the bank. Again... I am not sure of the point to this story as Mr Sullivan dies whilst sitting in his car in a traffic jam. Maybe we are just seeing another way of someone coping with the fall out of the Vietnam war?
In the final tale we meet both Bobby and Carol again as they attend S-J's funeral. Seems that Carol did not die as we all thought. she has a new identity and is now a teacher. Bobby seems to have ended up in a good enough place having become a carpenter and has a little stroll down memory lane. The thing that links it all back to the first story is that Bobby gets hold again of his old baseball glove which was taken by Willie Shearman. And where did they find the glove???... on John Sullivan's hand in the car in the traffic jam where he died.
I enjoyed these stories a lot. They are well structured and have a good pace to them. The Vietnam war is an undercurrent in the tales and that makes them a bit grim at times, like some of the characters. I like most of the people in he book but there are quite a few of them so at times it was hard trying to keep track of who was where at what time. I remember reading the one about Shearman and thinking I have heard this name before... but was it the last one or the one before that? There are lots of nice characters in the stories and King lets the main ones develop nicely so you get to know and like them. What I really like is that at the end of it you get to see how both Bobby and Carol Ann have fared in life. It is rewarding as you have invested quite a bit of time and went through a lot with them in the first tale.


Title: Hearts in Atlantis
Author: Stephen King
619 pages
NEL / Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN# 0-340-73891-X

Books to be read: 147

And now.... I am off to do some food shopping and then to pick another book!!!!