As promised, my book review of The Stand is here! Right off the bat, I will say I genuinely enjoyed reading this book. Though it took me an incredibly long time (I did move my entire house during this time, to be fair), and there were a few hiccups along the way with the book itself, I thought it one of the most enjoyable and most authentic Stephen King novels I’ve read.
The Stand was published for the first time in 1978, well before King went through his “I don’t need an editor” phase (he did have an editor, to be clear, I’m just not sure what the editor did). It follows several characters and places as the events of a flu epidemic with an extremely high mortality rate hits the world. The focus is on the United States, but there are events that let the reader know that the entire world is suffering from this endemic. King explores humanity and our ideas of survival and community as humanity is nearly wiped out.
The idea of the pandemic isn’t original in itself, but the way King explores through the eyes of so many different people makes it feel unique. He shows what it would be like for those left in prisons, for a young pregnant woman, for a deaf mute, for people of high socioeconomic status as well as low socioeconomic status in the same breath. At no point does the reader wonder, “Well, what about this group of people,” because King has already thought of and incorporated it. He has an extremely far-reaching sight as far as who this disease would affect, how it would affect them, and how they would most likely react to it. That makes it feel very real, and very scary.
There is another copy of The Stand, which is the one I happened to purchase on Kindle, that was rereleased in the 90s with about 400 pages more of content, making it a 1200 page book instead of the former 800 pages (yay math!). It also included a disclaimer from King that though there is a lot of additional content, the overall plot has changed little. Let me repeat that: Though there is additional content, the overall plot has changed little.
Then, it sounds like that content isn’t very necessary to the novel, doesn’t it? There are a LOT of details or background information given in this novel that are probably unnecessary. This is not unique to this novel as King really loves to flesh out his characters, even the ones that appear “on screen” for a handful of pages. As I mentioned in my previous post, it’s a signature of his writing, but it can also be extremely irritating if you’re a plot-driven reader. Learning about a character who is largely irrelevant to the book feels a bit like a waste of time when you have 900 more pages to go.
However, there are certain parts where these details really “make” the story. For example, there’s a part in The Stand where Stephen King talks about the second endemic, the deaths of people who die after the flu by accident, suicide, murder, etc. The details given here allow us to feel empathy for these characters, and it makes the concept of the second waves of death all the more poignant. It makes a lot of sense that there would be many additional deaths after the initial outbreak of the flu as a result of the new situation of life, but that’s not what many would focus on. King’s attention to detail here really allows us to experience and empathize with these characters who we didn’t know and who won’t be returning.
This was one of the “hiccups” I mentioned which caused me to struggle early on in the novel. At a certain point, the detail can start to make the story feel endless, when what I really want is to see the story unfold, climax, and come to a resolution. This hiccup happened about a third of the way through the novel, and when I pushed on I soon found new elements incorporated that reinvigorated my interest in the book. Overall, I’m glad I kept reading, but I wouldn’t blame anyone who didn’t.
Hiccup number two occurred about halfway through the novel when I realized, in signature King style, that this book was not going to continue to follow the realistic consequences of the endemic. No, we were getting some fantasy thrown into the mix. At this point, people (mostly in the eastern region of the United States) in the novel were starting to band together. The main characters we were following were all seemingly heading in the same direction, some even leaving messages for others to follow them to their destination. It was a really cool concept that introduced the idea of rebuilding, which is what I was supremely interested in.
Then, we get a supernatural element thrown in. Another group is also being formed in the western region of the U. S. by a man who has special abilities. We learn later that the eastern group is being spearheaded by a women with special abilities as well, but the man is introduced first and this is where my interest failed once more. I was so invested in the idea of rebuilding society, and of this process being grounded in realism, that introducing this supernatural element completely threw me off. To be fair, I should have expected it. King does this in most of his novels, but it felt so out of left-field this time that I was actually really disappointed.
Again, I pushed on. Fortunately we did see some of the rebuilding, and I did think it was a fairly realistic interpretation of how society would try to rebuild. The supernatural quality seems to hang over the group for a while, looming nearby but not dominating the story. I think this was clever on King’s part because it is what allowed me to be drawn back into the story. By the time he returned to the supernatural elements, I was re-invested in the characters and (mostly) on board with the direction the story was heading.
Another, large part of this book that I really enjoyed was that King doesn’t pull any punches. He discusses the deaths in gruesome detail, and he discusses what people have to do to survive in the same way. I wouldn’t say this book is incredibly gory, but those who don’t enjoy gruesomeness of any kind will have a difficult time reading. There are also a lot of parts that are plain depressing, and those are the most painful for me to read. Still, I do think it’s worth trying if you’re on the fence about how you’ll react to the subject matter. You can’t unread it, but you can put it down and wash your mind out with something else.
So, my verdict is to read it. I think it’s an interesting exploration into what would happen with a complete breakdown of society. Introducing the supernatural elements did throw me off, but I think overall it was handled well. If you like Stephen King, you will definitely like this book.
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