BookReview: Under the Dome

"And...Done!"


Another Stephen King epic finished. Time to breathe again. Spring seems to have arrived. I missed the end of winter, because I was caught up in the destruction of a small fictional town in Maine.

Stephen King just doesn't write short or mid sized novels anymore.

Depending on your relationship with the Simpsons, you may or may not like the fact that Homer Simpson does not have a cameo in this novel. In fact, the dome is the only similarity between the two tales. In the book's afterword along with his many thanks, Stephen describes his inability to write this story when he first conceived up it in the 70s. He had tried several times, but it wasn't until recently that he could finish what he had started. It was a lot of baggage he had carried around and boasted that he could redraft the first chapter he conceived so long ago form memory.

It seems impossible, but as I writer myself I understand the joy and nuisance of carrying sentences and paragraphs around in my head.

The story is simple enough. One day a town suddenly has an invisible dome preventing anyone from entering or leaving the town. I use the word suddenly to the detriment to several characters in the story. In the moment that it took to appear, the dome severs heads and arms. It causes accidents and kills wildlife. Unlike the Simpsons snow globe dome, King's dome has a mysterious force behind it that causes electronics to explode when they come to close. Pacemakers too!

Although there are plenty of questions for the reader and the story's characters to ponder about the dome, the novel spends the bulk of its pages with the struggles of the town turning against itself. Missing from the majority of the novel, is what Stephen King has become famous for...the things that go bump in the night. The reader and the characters having a feeling that there is something "other worldly" about the dome, but King focuses on the horrors that people can inflict upon other people. There are power grabs, theft, arson, murder and rape. I've never read a novel before where multiple babies have died.

Now I have.

Death is commonplace in this novel. In a paragraph, King describes that at the beginning of the tale the town's population was around three thousand. By the end of the sentence, it was down to thirty and would be even lower if the reader continued to read. As the chapters widdle down, so do the characters and the reader is left to wonder who will survive.

Stephen King doesn't cheat the reader with this story. It is very entertaining. There are plenty of unexpected twists and turns. While most of the characters are very realistic in their shades of grey, the bad guys range from the dimwitted to dictator wannabes. And don't worry, the novel's mysteries are all solved by the end. No unnecessary cliffhangers here.

While I am glad to have the page count behind me, I very much enjoyed this book. I am also very excited at the rumors of this story being turned into a movie. I believe it could translate very well, because at it's root, this story is about personal conflicts between human beings.

This book is perfect reading material if you're going to be hanging out in a small town or out in the wilderness for any period of time. It might even make you paranoid.

Don't forget to check out Stephen King's website. www.stephenking.com  Many of my browsing hours have been spent there and I don't regret any of them.