Joyland, Stephen King (2013) Book Review

“When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect that you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.”

“Life isn’t always a butcher’s game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they’re precious.”

            If you’re looking for a quick and exciting summer themed read, I highly recommend Joyland. This book will have you so wrapped up in the plot, you’ll forget what day and time it is. With a mix of horror, thrilling adventure, love, heartbreak, and learning about who you are in your 20s, Stephen King tells the perfect tale from start to finish. If only a movie production were in the works!

            Set in the summer of 1973 at an amusement park in North Carolina, our protagonist Devin Jones begins his summer job as a “greenie” at Joyland. Dealing with a broken heart, he has high hopes that the new job will keep him distracted enough from his first true love. Upon his arrival, he is told about the legend of the girl that was murdered in the infamous Horror House. Why was she murdered? Who would do such a thing to an innocent girl? Was there more than just one murder?

            A typical Stephen King story, there are characters that have what is called “the sight”, an intuitive ability that normal people do not inherit. With this psychic influence, the mystery is solved by not only Devin and his pals but a new friend, Mike, and Mike’s mother Annie.

            I do believe that this book is full of irony. The title alone is misleading – Joyland – the amusement park that is filled with laughing children, excited families, fun first dates - the smell of popcorn, hotdogs, and cotton candy all throughout the park. Joyland also holds secrets of murder, mystery, and horror. I also think that on a deeper level, Joyland (and everything that happens inside its overbearing doors) also symbolizes ideologies of life for young adults in their 20s. It is a confusing time for most at that age as many life experiences and changes happen. Questions of how and where your life will go, questions of who you are, and the acceptance that you won’t have everything figured out… and that’s okay. The irony of Devin working a fun summer job in a place full of darkness while also trying to escape his current feelings of heartbreak and grief is written so perfectly and is read with ease.

            I also found the character development was greater than expected. While there are some two-dimensional characters, Devin is one of the few three-dimensional characters. Throughout his storytelling, it feels as if the reader is his best friend, a child, or a grandchild. The book “technically” takes place over a span of about 6 months. During that time frame, Devin grows out of his naivety about people, love, and how the world works. He matures out of a heartbreak and becomes his own person as the book continues. In all sense of the word, Devin truly becomes a man.

            Without spoiling the rest of the book, I will conclude that if you’ve never read a Stephen King novel, this is a great introduction into his marvelous and horrifying world. King is one of my favorite authors and I highly recommend this book if you’re craving a summer adventure with a bit of horror, thriller, and mystery entwined.

If you’re interested in uncovering this murder mystery with Devin Jones and company, you can find it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Joyland-Hard-Case-Crime-Stephen/dp/1781162646

1. Sources Cited: King, Stephen. Joyland. Hard Case Crime, 2013.

Jaws, Peter Benchley (1974) Book Review

Jaws, written by Peter Benchley in 1974, has to be one of the best books I’ve read this year. I chose to read Jaws because I’ve seen the movie so many times and wanted a quick, summer-based novel. After reading this masterpiece, I think I’m starting to prefer books over movie adaptations.

Throughout the story, we follow Martin Brody, our main character from the first shark attack investigation to the final destruction of the beast. Brody faces several conflicts, the first (and most important) one being the shark. Other major conflicts he resolves include his unhappy and unsatisfactory marriage with Ellen Brody, constant disagreements with his colleague Matt Hooper, as well as a battle between the mayor of Amity (Larry Vaughn) and Brody about keeping the beaches open for the Fourth of July weekend.

Obviously, Jaws is about a shark that terrorizes the town of Amity Island during the summer of 1974, but that’s not the only theme of the book. There are other moods and themes throughout the story. I personally think another major mood (after Man-vs-Predator) is this overbearing fear factor. There’s a constant feeling of “who’s going to actually win? Is the shark going to eat and terrorize everyone, wiping out the entire town and East Coast?”. This isn’t necessarily a ‘happy’ book… The happy and hopeful feelings that Peter Benchley only gives us a glimpse of are quickly overshadowed by the fact that something is going to go extremely wrong.

If you’ve read the book, this next section will not come as a surprise for you and you might even agree with me about this being one of the best scenes in the entire book. If you haven’t read the book, THIS NEXT SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS. Don’t say I didn’t warn you… read at your own discretion.

Okay, okay, okay. Now for my absolute FAVORITE part of the book, and no, it has absolutely nothing to do with the shark. Let me give you some background leading up to this. Matt Hooper, Martin Brody’s colleague and shark/fish expert, runs into Brody’s wife at a store in town. Mrs. Ellen Brody discovers that Matt is the younger brother of her ‘long lost love’, the man she was with before she married Martin. Naturally, this encounter brings up concealed feelings and memories and Ellen finds herself quite enamored with Mr. Hooper. Shortly after this, she has this not-so-bright idea that her and her husband should host a dinner party with the upper echelons of Amity Island. She grapples with wanting to belong in high society again and honestly resents Martin for “taking her away” from that class.

The dinner scene takes place just right before the middle of the book in chapter 7. This entire chapter had me chuckling at the behavior and confrontation between Ellen and Martin. First off, she has Matt Hooper show up half an hour earlier than the rest of the guests. Does she have a good excuse for this? Absolutely not. Brody notices some type of connection between the two and proceeds to get wasted even before the other guests show up. Things are said, an argument occurs after the guests leave, and Martin realizes how unhappy him and his wife are in their marriage. Like I said, this was one of the funniest parts of the book because, again, the book isn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows.

In conclusion, I definitely enjoyed the book more than the movie. How Steven Spielberg was okay with leaving out the dinner scene and Ellen’s affair with Hooper is beyond me. I think the movie might’ve been less boring in the middle had he included the extra drama. I also want to add that this book was totally experimental for Peter Benchley. His idea was to write a story about a man-eating shark because it was so far out of the ordinary. Benchley was fascinated with sharks. He reads hundreds of books about the creatures and he learned that sharks “don’t even like the taste of us, and great whites often spit humans out because they’re too bony and fat-free (compared to seals that is)” (Benchley 4). The author was quite surprised at the success of the book and was able to build awareness for protecting sharks and other marine life.

You can find Jaws on Amazon: https://a.co/d/h5irvv3

Source: Benchley, Peter. Jaws. Doubleday, 1974.