Review: Stephen King's Cell
Cell. Stephen King. Apocalyptic horror thriller.
And after reading this one, I paused for a while before answering mine the next time it rang.
Consider the fact that it is probably the most common personal device in the world, with virtually everyone aged from seven to 70 in developed and even developing countries using one. Suppose, as Stephen King suggests, somebody managed to harness this fact to make every user in the world stark, raving, homicidally mad?
It is a King trademark to go beyond the imaginable, and in this fast-paced yarn he does so again with aplomb, skill, and gringe-making savagery in parts. The setting is his own New England, the characters as usual very ordinary people facing extraordinary challenges. Yet it is again a mark of the author's style in that we feel an empathy with the small ordinary details of their journey through the book and to a hoped-for salvation.
Whether there is salvation, I'll leave to other readers to decide. Suffice to say that I read this one through in just over a day, with the usual breaks to eat, sleep, and recover from particularly heart-thumping scenes of horror.
It takes a certain kind of reader to like Stephen King. And there are an awful lot of us.
Brian Byrne.
