Hard Case Crime Joyland (Illustrated Edition)

Excelente livro, edição primorosa!

If you are depressed because your heart is broken by someone you loved and you can't think of your future anymore, you should read this novel. Though this story was written by King of Horror, it' not a horror story at all. Maybe after reading this, you will recall the film 'Stand By Me' or 'The Summer of '42' and you would like to stand on the beach with Dev and Annie.

To begin with, this is NOT a horror story. But then Stephen King has already written a number of fine stories that aren't horror stories (e.g., Green Mile, Stand By Me/The Body). Joyland is the story of Devin Jones, a young college student who has his heart broken by his first crush as he heads to work at an amusement park for the summer. The story also involves the possible ghost of a girl who was murdered at that amusement park- Joyland. There was a murder, whether or not there is a ghost is something I won't spoil for potential readers. But that, along with the murder, is an important sub-plot of this book. However, the main focus of the book is on Devin and the people he meets. From his roommates to his co-workers, King once again shows his skill at bringing people to life in his writing. There is a cliched cripple boy with psychic powers (a King staple), but even he is handled with a deft hand. King makes you care about Devin, and his ability to paint a scene makes it seem like you are there with Devin, in 1973, at a modest amusement park. The ability to create a vivid scene is one of King's greatest talents in my opinion, and this book clearly features that talent. It's a relatively short story at just under 300 pages, and it moves along at a good pace. Be forewarned again that this is not an action thriller or horror movie. It is very much about character development and a commentary on life itself rather than a book that just tries to shock or scare you. I normally don't go for this kind of fiction, but I'm a big fan of much of King's work and I found myself really enjoying this book. It may be an odd statement for me to make, but this book just seemed like the kind of cerebral movie that Clint Eastwood sometimes directs recently. Something that on the surface seems to promise great action or blood, but really makes a much deeper connection on both an emotional and a cerebral level. All that means I think this is a five-star book. It made me feel, it made me think, and it made me lose track of time- all signs of a very good book! So if you're looking for a book that showcases King's ability to write about (more or less) real characters and real life drama, with perhaps a bit of darkness thrown in, then Joyland is an excellent read.

Joyland is an excellent story from Stephen King. He takes us back to the days when small private carnivals and amusement parks still operated, some traveling from town to town, appearing overnight after the trucks roll in and the tents are pitched, while some were fixed in place in the beach towns and vacation spots of our country. He gives us characters with heart and doesn't burden the story with gratuitous or contrived suspense. The main character, Devon, is a college student who takes a summer job at a small amusement park located in a beach town in North Carolina. He quickly fits in and earns the respect of the long-term carny hands as well as his fellow summer workers. He is an easy-going and reflective young man, going through the pain of first separation and then rejection from his college girlfriend. When the summer ends he decides to stay on full time at the carnival rather than return to school. Devon becomes friends with a woman and her son. They live in a large house on the beach, and the boy is wheelchair bound and stricken with Muscular Dystrophy. He also has a wisdom beyond his years, and he is able to see things that others cannot . Devon encounters them initially in his walks along the beach, and when he helps the boy to launch a kite into the wind, the ice is broken. The boy's young mother is protective of her son as well as suffering herself, partly from the stress of caring for her disabled boy and partly due to estrangement from her family. Gradually Devon becomes close to them, each helping the other to deal with the pains in their lives. Finally, Devon hosts them for a day at the amusement park, closed for the winter but powered-up for this special occasion. It is a wonderful gift for the boy who has until then only observed it from afar. The mystery of a long-unsolved murder at the amusement part builds very slowly as we get to know Devon and the other characters. Early in his employment at the park Devon learns of the death of a girl who had been on the ride in the house of horrors. Her ghost is said to continue to haunt the park. When one of his co-workers sees the ghost himself, Devon's desire to learn how she was killed and why it was never solved grows until he is consumed by the need to solve the crime. It eventually leads him to uncovering the long-buried truth, a great and surprising climax to the story. I think that it is great that Stephen King's latest novel has been released as an affordable paperback novel rather than an expensive hard-cover book (or as an e-book, although I'm sure that it will be eventually). The publisher - "Hard Case Crime" - is one that I have been familiar with for a while, because for the past several years they have been releasing paperback crime novels in the style of those published in the U.S. from the 1940's through about the 1960's - check out for example The Dead Man's Brother , Blood on the Mink , The Girl With the Long Green Heart , Strange Embrace/69 Barrow Street . Stephen King has given them a huge shot in the arm by selecting them to publish his latest novel in this format, plus he has made it so much more affordable for his fans to pick up his latest novel at a reasonable price, and I salute him for doing it. (Hard Case Crime has also published limited-edition hardcover editions of this book, available at their website for a short time until they are sold out - just go to [...] and you will find them - for those who are committed King fans and must have hardcover editions of the book now). In a sense then, this book might be viewed Stephen King's homage to the days of paperback pulp fiction; the cover and presentation of the book is whimsical in the style of the pulp novels of fifty years past. King has written a story that is full of heart and compassion. This is a book that would be a great read even without the murder mystery and resident ghost. To have them as well makes it a superb story and a great choice for summer enjoyment, at the beach or by the poolside.

It's 1973 and Devin Jones is a 21-year-old college student, recently dumped by his long-term girlfriend (though still a virgin) and looking forward to working his summer vacation at the Joyland amusement park in North Carolina. Over the summer and into the Autumn, he'll meet new friends, a boy with a psychic gift and encounter the ghost of a murdered girl. Told as a reminiscence by Devin in 2013 ("I'm in my sixties now, I'm a prostate cancer survivor, but I still want to know why I wasn't good enough for Wendy Keegan"), this is what I would consider as prime King (and it's the first book of his I've read in almost ten years). It does take its time to get going (and the structure isn't immediately clear) but as you read you quickly realise the pace works perfectly - we get to know his friends, the park and its people and history, the owner of the guesthouse, the area and the times (music plays a key part in that, but there're plenty of pop culture references and there's a lovely in-joke in the name of a travelling circus). The characterisation is spot on and so deftly done you feel you know these people almost immediately. From Devin, who we desperately want to see succeed (and shake off the thoughts of Wendy), to Erin Cook ("Hollywood Girl") and Tom Kennedy, fellow summer workers who become a couple and life-long friends of Jones (though we later find out sad news about Tom), there's never a false moment for any of them. The secondary characters are just as well-drawn, springing to life with verve, like Emmalina Shoplaw who runs the guesthouse, Mr Easterbrook, the owner of Joyland, who dresses like a mortician and insists that the workers of Joyland are "here to sell fun" and Devin's Dad, a quiet, widowed, purposeful man. The park team - from Fred Dean, whose transformation from manager to worker is as much a surprise to us as it is for Devin to Lane Hardy, all tight-jeans and jaunty hat and rhyming couplets; from Eddie Parks a mean man who Devin saves and who maybe returns the favour to Madame Fortuna, a Brooklyn native who channels Bela Lugosi to deliver her psychic readings. It is she who tells Devin that he will meet a boy with a dog. That leads us to Annie Ross and her son Michael, who has the gift of second-sight but is stricken with muscular dystrophy. They live in a big house off the beach and whilst she doesn't acknowledge Devin as he walks by on the way to work, the boy does. When Devin helps him to fly his kite one day, they become friends and the gradual thawing of Annie to him is what gives this novel its heart - we come to understand why she is the way she is, we understand and empathise with the pain she feels watching her son die and we want to hold and comfort her as much as Devin does. Their relationship, from that first meeting to the final page, is beautifully observed and as heart-warming as it is amusing. The selling point (but not the real point) of the story - "Who dares enter the funhouse of fear?" - revolves around the fact that a young woman called Linda Gray was murdered in the Horror House ride (which Eddie Parks runs). Madame Fortuna won't enter it and Tom sees something in there that scares him, but Devin is intrigued and with help from Erin, he solves the crime and finally flushes out the "Carny Killer". I liked that angle, I enjoyed the detective part of it (though you'd be hard pressed to call it a crime novel), but that's not what the book was about. To me, "Joyland" is about the power of love and friendship (as a lot of King fiction is), it's about the amusement park and a way of life that no longer really exists (and carny-speak, The Talk, is used a lot, shorthand such as `ride-jockeys' for the operators, `rubes' for punters and `points' for pretty girls). It's about joy (Devin dresses up as Howie the Happy Hound, a role that other `greenies' hate but he loves because of how the kids react to him) and the fun and simplicity of childhood but it's also about loss (Wendy, Devin's mum) and the way life often doesn't go the way we want it to. Stephen King, for me, is often at his best when dealing with nostalgia ("The Body" being absolutely key to that theory), telling a story that on the surface might be horror or mystery or crime when in fact it's actually about coming of age and charting a rites of passage that speaks to most of us. "Joyland" is a beautiful book, a well paced and gripping read, full of humanity and light and darkness and topped with an ending that made me cry. If you only know Stephen King as a horror writer then you would be doing yourself a favour to discover this loving nod to life, to growing up and falling in love and, yes, to getting older. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.