Toughening out the Christmas Holidays and the Old Year 2009 by means of a few novels, a cocktail of onions and garlic, and last (but not least, mind you) a few shots of good liquor ... I will now start the new year, 2010, by negotiating the new blog with a few words on the recent books I've read:
The Dead Zone (1979) is the early Stephen King story of a young man who suffers from a terrible car accident and, against all odds, wakes and recovers from more than four years of lying comatose. A happy moment for him and his parents, no? Well, our hero soon wishes he hadn't awoken from his sleep: His girlfriend is since long married, his mother has become a religious zealot, and he has required a highly developed extrasensory perception that will change many lives, for better or for worse... And then there's the "Dead Zone", of course... You know all the rest.
I read The Dead Zone in Swedish the first time and last, precisely 21 years ago. I remembered the basics, but knew I had forgotten quite a lot, as expected. This is one of SK's better achievements, hidden away behind such behemoth old works as It, The Stand and The Shining. It's a very engaging, thought-provoking and quite a slow-moving novel that has a great deal of interesting, complex characters. It's funny how I long ago had an oral presentation on this book in my Swedish Class at the gymnasium in the very town I'm now living. I also remember asking some teachers and other adults if they'd heard of Stephen King and thus, reasonably often, receiving the answer: "No, I don't know much of him, but I've read The Dead Zone..."
Double zero. The House wins...
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