![]() His teacher that year, pretty Miss Monoghan, liked to end each day by saying, What have we learned today, kiddos? At the urgent care, while having his arm set (the lollipop he was given afterwards hardly seemed adequate compensation for the pain), Finn thought what he’d learned that day was Stick to the Twisty.Īt fourteen, running home from his friend Patrick’s house in a driving thunderstorm, a stroke of lightning hit the street directly behind him, close enough to char a line down the back of his jacket.King_112263_i-852_PTR.indd 11 8/30/11 9:52 AM I have never been what you’d call a crying man. So, to please Grandma, he went on the monkey bars and slipped while hanging upside down and fell and broke his arm. His sisters, Colleen and Marie, were on them, climbing and swinging like … well, like monkeys. Stop that awhile, why don’t ya, Grandma said one day. At the top he would sit and glide to the packed dirt at the bottom. There were steps, but Finn preferred to climb the slide itself on his hands and knees, up and around, up and around. ![]() What he liked was the Twisty, an entrancing curlicue of blue plastic twenty feet high. Finn didn’t care for the swings, had no use for the seesaws, could not have cared less about the roundy-round. When he was seven, he and his sisters were playing in Pettingill Park while Grandma sat on a nearby bench, alternately knitting and doing one of her word search puzzles. Also: God must have wanted that toe for an angel. Wouldn’t have happened again in a thousand years, his grandma said. It was summer, he was barefoot, and a cherry bomb thrown by an exuberant partygoer flew up, arced down with the stub of its fuse fizzing, and blew off the baby toe on his left foot. He was allowed out to listen to the music (Shane MacGowan blasting from pole-mounted portable speakers) on his side of the street. When he was five, there was a house party next door. He slipped through the hands of a midwife who had delivered hundreds of babies and gave his birthday cry when he hit the floor. Read moreįINN HAD A HARD GO of it from the very beginning. As darkly funny as it is deeply unsettling, this latest story from King pokes some serious fun at “the luck of the Irish”-or in fact counting on any kind of luck when the machinations of a few bullies and madmen can so easily and tragically upend the lives of the innocent. No one knows monsters-imagines monsters-like the creator of It, The Outsider, Pet Sematary, and countless other mind-bending and timeless bestsellers, but in Finn he targets a peculiarly twenty-first-century monster: men so consumed by spy and war games that they twist reality to suit their purposes. ![]() It’s got to be a case of mistaken identity, or is something far more sinister going on? And far more absurd?Īs the young man tries to save his skin, he travels through existential and psychological crises that are a signature of King’s stories. He wakes in a cell, the captive of men who think he’s got answers to give them about a briefcase full of plans, about blueprints and some bomb factory, and they are willing to go to great-and painful-lengths to get what they want from him. A hood is thrown over his head, there’s a needle in his arm, and he’s out. This is weird enough, but moments later, while he’s still rubbing a scraped elbow, a van pulls up and two men jump out and grab him. Then bam: Another kid who’s dressed suspiciously like him, who, in fact, looks a lot like him, runs smack into him. ![]() He’s exhilarated and aching with what it means to be young and alive. King sets the scene: Finn is nineteen, walking home alone at night after necking with his girlfriend. His grandmother promises his fortunes will change, that God owes him, but what are the chances of that when the author of his fate is legendary storyteller Stephen King, the undisputed master of the macabre, eerie, and plain terrifying? Never mind the cherry bomb that blew off one of his toes when he was five or that fall from the monkey bars at age seven that left him with a broken arm. He was dropped at birth and nearly ripped in two by a lightning strike. From all appearances he’s just a regular Irish kid, living in an Irish city, but he’s exceptional in one way: He’s wildly unlucky. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |