The Gospel According to Prisco

Stephen King’s been on a rough patch as of late.  Cell started out promising, but fizzled out worse that finding out your sister’s on the other side of the glory hole.  Lisey’s Story made me want to physically beat the smuck out of him.  And I had heard mixed things about Duma Key.

It’s not too bad though.  Again, it’s as if King is reliving all of his old stories through the scratched and cracked glasses of old age and post-traumatic accident disorder.  Edgar Freemantle is a super wealthy contractor who suffers a terrible accident, where he loses and arm and fractures his skull.  His life falls apart, his wife leaves him after his violent outbursts, and he finds himself down in Florida where he decides to take up painting.  Suddenly, his paintings take on haunting overtones, and it slowly devolves in a disturbing ghost story. 

That dismisses it as really M. Night Shamalayan, but it’s more than that.  The story and the artwork are very surreal, and it’s kinda nice.  It’s an older man’s story, but King is an older man.  If he has to keep plopping out stories, at least he seems to be getting slightly better.  It’s not his best work, by far, but we’re talking about a man who’s written some of the greatest horror stories in the history of literature.  I recently read a new Bradbury, and it was bit like that experience.  He has lost a few steps, and mellowed a bit in his old age, but at least he’s still got a turn of the gothic.  

If you like King, you might want to give it a whirl.  It’s a slow book, and it trundles along, but the characters are nice, and it’s a decent story.