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Summary: Hearts in Atlantis
Review: I was pleasantly surprised at this book. It is not at all like so many of his novels. No horror. No great mystery to be solved. At times I was on the edge of boredom, yet I couldn't put the book down; it compelled me to keep reading. Although several separate and distinctive stories, they are all linked and seem to represent the different ages and stages we all go through. The heart of the stories lies in the emotions and experiences of almost-everyday lives, with just a tinge of the strange and mysterious wrapped throughout.
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Summary: A picture is not always worth a thousand words.
Review: Excellent novel, thick with imagery and wonder-- unlike the movie of the same name.
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Summary: Deserves 10 stars. READ THIS BOOK!!!
Review: One of the best books i've ever read! These three tales of love and death prove that Stephen King is much more than just a great author of horror. I hope that this novel is just the beginning of an all new side of King, who I now believe is the best storyteller of all time.
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Summary: It's Time to Play it Straight
Review: Will Stephen King retire? Should he retire? Yes and no. Let me illustrate, using HEARTS IN ATLANTIS as a guide.
HEARTS In ATLANTIS is really a bunch of novelettes and short stories. The first one is traditional Stephen King. A young kid, Bobby Garfield, gets a job reading to this kindly (and strange) old man, who's being pursued by "Low Men in Yellow Coats". Cool-sounding I'll admit, but really only more of the same clown staring up out of a sewer grate.
The second one, HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, is more like it. It's about a bunch of college kids sitting around their dorm rooms playing Hearts. They're playing for blood. They skip class, they're flunking out of school, which wouldn't be all that bad if it weren't for Vietnam and the draft. This one is written in the vein of King's best book, MISERY, which had a valid theme (Obsessive fans with no taste) and finger-biting suspense (plausible finger-biting suspense). But King just doesn't trust himself. He doesn't believe the card game story can stand on its own and his editor hasn't got the balls to tell him he doesn't need all that other garbage. Remember THE STAND? An early editor actually made him cut a couple hundred pages of that one. So what does King do? When he gets the clout, he puts the padding back and publishes the thing again (Unfortunately this was the one I had the misfortune to read).
There's a scene toward the end of HEARTS where things start falling out of the sky. If you're reading one of King's books, you can count on one of these sooner or later: "A vast rummage sale was falling out of the sky: tape recorders and rugs and a riding lawn-mower with the grass-caked blade whirling in its housing and a black lawn-jockey and an aquarium with the fish still swimming in it . . ." It goes on for another page. I'm a compulsive sort. I can't skip over anything, including footnotes, but I almost stopped reading after that.
Don't get me wrong. I think Stephen King is a great short story writer. Even some of his horror stories are great. I remember one from SKELETON CREW where these people are trapped in a supermarket surrounded by giant bugs. Not exactly Edgar Allen Poe, but it was fun. SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and STAND BY ME were based on his short stories and they were two of his most successful movies. No, King isn't out of ideas; he's just out of clown-down-the-grate ideas. And those were stale after he wrote TOMMYKNOCKERS. IT's time to go straight, Steve. I was hoping you would after MISERY.
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Summary: Uncanny parallel to his real life
Review: If you have read his book "On Writing" he has a small biography that parallels this book in nature. The story line and the details were intriguing. The only distraction from this was his constant potty mouth. He must have needed filler to flush (not flesh) out the book. I do not know if that is a recent phenomenon of they all are that way. The movies are not that way. This is one story with a few rest spots that make some think it is a series of shorts. Do not attempt to read this out of order as each relies on knowledge of the former. The first phase, about the "Low Men", is the only real supernatural section. And as he points out it is the moral environment around the story that makes the supernatural scary. In this phase he also does a dissertation books including "The Lord of the Flies." There are real close corollaries to "The Day the Earth Stood Still" single mother, kid named Bobbie, and a mysterious border. The second phase Deals with a collage life environment, which is a background for molding character and characters. I do not want to tell too much detail, as that is why you read the book. The third phase is broken into two parts, one a story of Willie during and after Nam, then the whole set of previous characters surround by death and near death experiences.
The not so loose stories ingeniously ties together by a certain object that travels throughout the times to add as a catalyst and a conclusion.
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Summary: Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis
Review: Everything in the novel "Hearts in Atlantis" by Stephen King revolves around theme of the story of schoolboys in "The Lord of Flies". A few schoolboys are stranded on an island after plane crash. Soon it gets into the two fights or wars going on. One in the sky, the other between two groups of boys on the ground. Living in natural state brings out inborn cruelty. The same thing we witness in Vietnam. The group of soldiers- Sully, Malenphant, Willie Sherman are attacked, and cornered by Vietcong. They are running towards clearing to get evacuated, when helicopters falls down and explodes. They rush to rescue people in helicopter. Jack in the Lord of flies kills a sow; here Malenphant kills Vietnamese woman in his war rage, giving vent to basic natural instinct to kill.
The survivors are haunted for rest of their life by this and other event, blowing up of one of their own companion, severely wounded. War didn't finish when it was over, but survives and continues in their mind. One commentator in his essay refers "Atlantis" as a symbol of years of Sixties. I feel that rather Atlantis stands for that period of adolescence and youth in the life of main characters in the novel. Their life in college Dormitory. They live a life governed by their own rules, apart from the rest of the world. This life gradually sinks, never to come back. Thus the story stops being their own story. All of us have gone through that period of life, where we loose our child hood innocence and dream, gradually learn what life is and grow into it. It gradually drifts away and lives only in our own memory. This is the period when we don't know our place in the world surrounding us. We try to live it in our own way, apart from the rest of the world. The beating of Carol in the park near field B is somewhat akin to killing a mamsan-Old Vietnamese lady and killing a sow. Carol was not virtually killed, just badly beaten, but something in her mind is dead for ever. This forever haunts Willie Sherman, just like killing of Mamsan till his death haunts Sully, though both of them didn't actually do themselves. The summer vacation of 1960 brings the isolation to Bobby and his friends like air crash to schoolboys in The Lord of Flies. They daily routine is stopped, they are vacuum, nothing to do except roam around in their own world while adults in home are busy with their chores and problems. Thus they become prey to their own natural instincts. The effect of the summer vacation on 1960 was the same as effect produced by Vietnam War on young American soldiers on distant island. In " Hearts in Atlantis" Stephen King is taking us to the heart of some of the problems of to days American life, drugs, school shootings, street Gang fights, drive away shootings. These are nothing but killing a sow. The news media like CNN and NBC are broadcasting the head of sow stuck on a pole all over America and rest of the world. Amidst all this, as Bobby Garfield thinks, we need to remember, there is always a Navy Guy or Rionda coming along to stop the bad action and rescue. This is something reader must not forget when putting the book down, Though Carol and Bobby Garfield go behind the scene most of the time after Low Men in Yellow Coats, they are the main characters; this is their love story in a sense. Of all characters, Carol stands out as heroine, a young idealistic girl, who was beaten up and then tricked by activist, thus robbed of everything.
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Summary: Starts out good but....
Review: I have read several of Stephen King's books and was anxious to read this one. I found the beginning to be pretty interesting. The story about the boy and the men in yellow coats and the interesting new neighbor were pretty good. I just kept waiting for something exciting to happen and it never did. The last half of the book seemed to really drag. I was waiting for Bobby to walk in somewhere. It was almost 4 totally different books combined. It just seemed to drag on forever. I never really got into this book.
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Summary: 1# fan, Fredrikstad, Norway
Review: This is a great book! Its somhow different from outher King book, but still its great. I got this for xmas 2001. I had wanted it for long, but not in Norwegian. Finaly my aunt had order it from someplace. Its fritening in the way, coz I had never thought of the vietnam war in a way King write about it. I have learend about it in school and so, but I never seemed to listen about it. I learned something from this book, how awful the vietman var was. This book made me cry! Its not many times King has made me cry, but he did. Its sad in a way, still its fritening, and that all mixed together makes a relly relly great book, its recomented for you people out there who understand the "Reading for fun" term!! This book will make you laught, cry, and be scared for daylight! I can ashure you that! I cant wait to see the movie, or start riding it again!!
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Summary: Great Book!
Review: Hearts in Atlantis takes a story that starts in the 1960s and strings it out into many stories that conclude in the present day. All of the characters in Hearts in Atlantis are described in great detail pertaining to the characters personality. Throughout the book the reader is able to logically follow why the character feels or acts the way they do. A good example of this would be in the first story. The reader can easily follow reasons of resentment that the main character harbors toward his mother. Hearts in Atlantis also vividly depicts the decade. King uses his characters to paint the time. Characters go to peace rallies that turn violent; characters go to college to avoid being drafted and characters flunk out and go to Vietnam. King also uses music as a device to convey the times. Specifically, music was used to convey the 1960s. Most songs mentioned were songs of protest by folk singers but there were also oldies included. I thought Hearts in Atlantis was a very good book and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading historical fiction. The book is very accurate when it portrays the times from 1960s to the present. The stories, particularly the first and second ones, are enthralling. I could hardly put the book down.
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Summary: great audio version
Review: I first read "Hearts in Atlantis" a couple of years ago. I really, really liked the book. I would cite it as one of the best pieces of evidence against those more snobbish folks who like to pretend Stephen King can't write. The book is a masterpiece of intertwining stories. It follows the fates of various characters from a small New England town over the course of more than forty years: from the wonder and sadness of youth, through an eerily terrible account of college, to the identity crises of middle age--and finally, death. Some of these stories will, like Myth, become a part of you. King's honesty and insight into human nature carves a path through the hidden chambers of the human soul. This is some of his greatest stuff. The movie failed to do this book any kind of justice--even with the great Anthony Hopkins. Not so with the tape recording. William Hurt took some adjusting to for me, but he is consistently outstanding as a reader. In "Low Men in Yellow Coats," Hurt captures Bobby's innocence and Mrs. Garfield's ambition (and later wounded-ness) perfectly. His laid back reading catches something of a seemingly simpler time. King also does a darn good job. I did not care for his earlier reading of "The Gunslinger," but he is spot on here. I highly recommend this audio version.
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