11/22/63 - Hardcover

Stephen King

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1451627289 ISBN 13: 9781451627282

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2011

Synopsis

Stephen King’s #1 bestselling time-travel novel—now a limited series on Hulu starring James Franco!

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.

About this title

Review:

Fine stories to take with us into the night. (Neil Gaiman on FULL DARK, NO STARS in the Guardian)

America's greatest living novelist. (Lee Child)

King's gift of storytelling is unrivalled. His ferocious imagination is unlimited. (George Pelecanos)

'King's most purely entertaining novel in years . . . utterly compelling.' (John Connolly on UNDER THE DOME)

'Staggeringly addictive.' (USA Today on UNDER THE DOME)

'Tight and energetic from start to finish.' (New York Times on UNDER THE DOME)

'The pedal is indeed to the metal.' (Guardian on UNDER THE DOME)

Delivers a lot of praise and enjoy. The story comes off the blocks with almost alarming speed ... he tells a story like a pro .... 11.22.63 kept me up all night. (Daily Telegraph)

Stephen King at his epic, pedal-to-metal best' (Alison Flood, Sunday Times, Culture)

not just an accomplished time-travel yarn but an action-heavy meditation on chance, choice and fate. (Independent Books of the Year)

The details of Fifties America, the cars, the clothes, the food, the televisions with wonky horizontal hold, are so vivid that you begin to wonder whether the author himself hasn't had access to a time machine.

...But as you worry at the paradoxes and the brilliantly explained pseudo science there is no denying that this monster yearn is blindingly impressive. Manly writers run out of steam as they get older. King, though, writes books that are ever longer and more demanding. I can't wait to see what he will tackle next.

(Daily Express)

Stephen King's new novel, 11.22.63, combines a variety of genres, being a JFK assassination, a story of time travel, a variation on the grail quest, a novel of voyeurism, a love story, a historical novel, a counter-factual historical novel and the chilling tale of a sinister animate universe, a form which can be traced back to the ghost stories of MR James. (London Revuew of Books)

The master of the pen has written yet another extraordinary novel. (The Independent)

Perhaps only seasoned storyteller Stephen King could accomplish changing the course of history in his vast time-travelling masterpiece whilst effortlessly weaving political and social details with abundant humour. King's intriguing new story structure will surely catapult the author to another best-seller. (The Australian Women's Weekly)

These early sections of the novel are almost irresistible entertaining, enlivened not just by King's supreme control of the form but by his sardonic wit and usual generosity of spirit and expansiveness. Yet as Jack/George moves closer to his goal, other, darker notes intrude, as time itself begins to resist his attempts to change its course, and as he begins to identify with his quarry.... Beneath the reassuring glow of King's portrait of an earlier, simpler time moves a darker and less comfortable vision, a glimpse of the terrifying machinery that moves below the surface of human history, and which stands as a stark, chilling rejoinder to the fantasies of escape embodied in so many time travel stories. (The Weekend Australia)

Mammoth but entertaining, this is part sci-fi, part suspense and part travelogue of a long-ago America. (Who Weekly)

Stephen King is a remarkable and wonderful storyteller who never loosens his grip on the reader throughout the 750-page book. (Women's Day)

The novel is big, ambitious and haunting. King has probably absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his baby-boom American generation as thoroughly and imaginatively as any other writer. (Mildura Midweek)

King weaves the social, political and popular culture of his baby-boom American generation into a devastating exercise in escalating suspense. (Daily Liberal)

A fascinating journey. (Armidale Express Extra)

A delightful blend of history and fantasy by a man who has always had a soft spot for an America where men wore fedoras, drove big Fords and could do the foxtrot. A thriller by a genius writer. (The Courier Mail)

People often complain there are no writers of the stature of Dickens anymore. I think that for pure energy and invention missed with compassion, King stands in that writer's direct line. Dickens' heir is alive and well and living in Maine. (Eureka Street)

This is Stephen King in top and chilling form. (Take 5)

You have to take a leap of faith with time-travel novels, but if there's one writer who can pull it off, it's Stephen King. ... Captivating, surprisingly pacy and free from sci-fi cliché, it's no wonder the film version is already being planned. (Shortlist)

The most remarkable story-teller in modern American literature. (Mark Lawson Guardian)

a powerful love story (Mirror)

One of the strengths of the book is King's at once nostalgic and honest view of the end of the Eisenhower era. King manages to avoid both sentimentalizing the past and treating it with massive condescension; his role as the poet of American brand-names serves him well here. (Independent)

King swiftly moves beyond vintage Americana to unfold a stunningly panoramic portrait of the era. His [King's] fascination with evil...arranges characters among clear mortal frontiers that fell meaningful rather than simplistic. King commands an inordinately fat space on the bookshelf with 11.22.63 but it's hard to begrudge when his vast imagination is working across such an epic canvas. (Seven, The Sunday Telegraph )

11.22.63 marks a definite maturing of literary command and ambition. The key to any novel set in an alternate reality is credible world building, the steady accumulation of detail - preferably lightly distributed - that brings the story alive. King succeeds in this, partly drawing from his own memories. (Adam LeBor, FT Weekend)

...This is the American of Stephen King's childhood and it's one that he re-creates in vivid and loving detail... This is a truly compulsive, addictive novel not just about time-travel or the Kennedy assassination but about recent American history and its might-have-beens, about love, and about how life 'turns on a dime'. It's a thunking 700-pager which left me only wanting more. The master storyteller in truly masterful form. (Daily Mail)

Book Description:

COLLECTOR'S SET: LIMITED EDITION & DVD of Stephen King's first mainstream time-travel novel, which takes you back to an eternally fascinating moment in history: the assassination of JFK.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1451627289
• ISBN 13: 9781451627282
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 864