Jenn's Reviews > 11/22/63

** spoiler alert ** I don't know what to rate this book. Some parts, like the ending, are beyond 5 stars. Some parts, like Jake's itemized spying on Lee Oswald, dragged, for me.

Overall, I really like 11/22/63. My favorite thing might be how well 35-year-old Jake Epping's personality represents my generation. Jake doesn't go back in time to save Kennedy for Kennedy's sake or to make the world a better place, like Al does; Jake goes back in time to make the world a better place for one guy who Jake cares about in 2011--to save him from his homicidal father, and, later, to save him from Vietnam. Jake allows people in the past to become maimed and, as Kennedy's date with destiny approaches, even to die--and knows that these events are the result of his going back in time. But Jake doesn't personally know any of the people who die and he takes measures to fix those who become maimed (as long as he knows them), so it's all good. At the risk of generalizing hardcore here, I feel that's so typical of someone from my generation. We're a self-centered bunch, and King nailed it with Jake's character.

The 50s-sounding 2011 dialogue bugged me at first, before I realized that the book was a narrative written by Jake after he'd been living in the 50s for a while. In that context, the unauthentic 2011 dialogue makes sense, though it still bothered me a little. The tendency toward monotony that the Oswald parts have is the only real thing I don't like about 11/22/63. The spying-on-Oswald parts felt like a chore--not just to read, but like they'd been a chore for King to write. Like the Jodie story was the one that King really wanted to write, and the Oswald story was his excuse to write it.

Everything else in 11/22/63 is awesome. I especially love the idea of the past being a monster that's trying stop Jake. I saw another reviewer comment that 11/22/63 isn't in any way a horror story, and I have to disagree--the Yellow Card Man and the whole Jimla thing had me pretty unnerved. I love that people who were terminally ill or who'd had a stroke could sense that Jake didn't belong. I love how close the names "Sadie" and "Satan" are, and how Jake notes that George de Mohrenschildt is like Satan to Lee Oswald: de Mohrenschildt tempts Oswald, but in the end, it's Oswald's choice, just like Sadie (innocently) tempts Jake to gamble with the fate of the world. One of the best things about 11/22/63 is, there is no guessing the ending. Even in the last 20 pages, I wasn't sure what would happen. Seflish douchebag Jake destroying all of existence for the chance to live his life with Sadie seemed as likely as Jake learning his lesson and leaving well enough alone.

I might give this one a 5. If I keep thinking about it, I probably will.