Randy M continues our countdown to Hallowe’en with his third suggestion.
JOYLAND by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime, 2013)
I had a car, but on most days in that fall of 1973 I walked to Joyland from Mrs. Shoplaw’s Beachside Accommodations in the town of Heaven’s Bay. It seemed like the right thing to do. The only thing, actually. By early September, Heaven’s Beach was almost completely deserted, which suited my mood. That fall was the most beautiful of my life. Even forty years later I can say that. And I was never so unhappy. I can say that, too. People think first love is sweet, and never sweeter than when that first bond snaps. You’ve heard a thousand pop and country songs that prove the point; some fool got his heart broke. Yet that first broken heart is always the most painful, the slowest to mend, and leaves the most visible scar. What’s so sweet about that?— first paragraph, prologueCollege junior Devin Jones, about to have his heart broken by his girlfriend, finds a summer job along the shore of Heaven’s Bay, North Carolina in the amusement park known as Joyland. And it is a Joyland for the children who visit, and a refuge for the former carnys who staff the park and give it its air of mostly good-natured hucksterism.
But Joyland’s past includes a murder four years before. A young woman, escorted into the park by a man with a hat down over his forehead and wearing dark sunglasses, has a fun time until the last ride, Joyland’s only dark ride, the Horror House. Her body was found along the side of the track, throat cut. It’s common for the college students who work at Joyland to try to ferret out what they can about the murder, but Devin learns more than most and with a bit of research help from his new friend Erin, the answer to the mystery seems within reach. And then the phone rings …
This is King in his most relaxed story-telling mode, adopting a first person narrator in his sixties – keep that in mind; as with Cronos age is a mostly unintentional theme in this year’s entries – harking back to the summer he truly grew up and recalling the mystery he became involved with. As always there is King’s ease of narration, the flow of story gradually unearthing the parameters of the mystery and its solution – we learn early on the killer wore gloves and two shirts, so the murder was premeditated, and later find there are photos of the man with the victim but, of course, his face is obscured. And, too, the narration establishes that Joyland resides in Kingland: the dead woman’s ghost has been seen; there is a fortune-teller for the park who just might have a touch of the gift of prophesy and a young boy even more gifted. And as always, King takes the time to fill in his characters, like Erin and her boyfriend, Tom, both working Joyland and both new friends Devin makes, as well as the carnys he works with, in no small part by offering a happy array of carny-speak, some real and some King invention.
Others precede me in saying this is not primarily a horror story or even a mystery, but a coming-of-age novel, and King writes that about as well as anyone. To Joyland Devin goes and he finds a broken-heart and also ways to heal through the concern and care of his new friends, but mainly through exercising his own large-heartedness. He meets Annie and Mike, the latter a young boy severely ill, the former his mother, tightly buttoned down and wary of strangers but devoted to giving Mike the best summer she possibly can, something Devin may be able to help with.
One quality that has often distinguished Kingland from the realms of other horror writers is the possibility of kindness, of compassion that leads to action: Think of Dick Hallorann in The Shining or Ben Mears in Salem’s Lot or Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones. Here King offers us just enough to class this as a mildly spooky concoction while concentrating on Devin Jones, another in the catalog of grounded, level-headed, large-hearted King narrators, recalling in the tranquility of age a pivotal event in his life which results in the best possible beach read, the novel that makes you feel a little better for having read it.
POSSIBLE READINGS OF SIMILAR INTEREST:
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
The Snowman’s Children and ”Struwwelpeter” by Glen Hirshberg
”Boobs” by Suzy McKee CharnasMonday: The Sinful Ones by Fritz Leiber
