July 24, 14.18pm
I can't remember the last time I read a Stephen King novel; I remember starting, but not finishing, Rose Madder not long after it was published about 10 years ago. I read every instalment of The Green Mile as each was published (and became quite impatient for each instalment) and I've seen bits and pieces on television, like Needful Things.
I also read Faithful, the fascinating diary/conversation between King and novelist Stewart O'Nan, Boston Red Sox nuts both, about their team's dramatic championship season of 2004.
But for some reason I stopped reading the novels - maybe I thought I grew out of horror, I'm not really sure. But I had always really enjoyed them.
But last week, I surprised myself by downloading Cell to my iPod,from the very excellent Audible audio book service, for keeping my mind occupied while my body does what it needs to in the gym.
And it's a ripper - a throwback to, or perhaps even a latter day technological update for, The Stand, my favourite King novel and probably one of my favourite reads of all time. In The Stand, US civilisation is destroyed by a flu like plague which wipes out millions and leaves the survivors - divided into good and evil - to fight over how society is rebuilt.
In Cell the virus that brings chaos, misery and death to New England is the Pulse, which is delivered down mobile phones into the brains of users who are then rendered violently insane and become known as the "phone crazies" by the book's central character, Clayton Riddell, who begins a long journey on foot from Boston to his home in Maine where he hopes to find his son and estranged wife.
King is brilliant at this sort of stuff; the description of Boston being brought to a quick destruction as the Pulse hits is spell-binding. It starts with small but sickening personal dramas played out before an audience paralysed with shock before degenerating rapidly into a total breakdown of the laws that hold society together and an explosive fiery climax.
He is also the master of the moment, playing cunningly with words as readers (or listeners, I guess) wait for the decisive, or emotional, or grisly moment they know is just about to arrive. His psychology is also good - his characters seem to react in a way that rings true and evolve in a convincing fashion.
I listened to an hour or so last night, while trying to sleep in an airless and over-heated London room ailing after the fortnight of extraordinary temperatures we have suffered here, and - now about halfway through a 12 hour reading - was transfixed.
Despite the outlandish nature of the story - at least I hope it's outlandish - King's ability to ratchet up the tension is brilliant. He is a very, very good storyteller, adept at putting his ready right there on the page.
I don't mind admitting that at one point I did pull the window a little closer down and shut the curtains as the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up, although admittedly this was largely to do with the fear that the giant domestic cat that often uses the ledge as a conduit from one house to the other in the middle of the night, might pay a visit at an inopportune moment and send my ticker into a tailspin.