History, he slowly realises, is personal as well as public.

But whereas Ellroy creates a crazy matrix of law, politics, sex, big business and underworld shenanigans, King slows the pace and focuses on the sort of small town in Maine in which he was raised.Įpping teaches at the local school, falls in love with a librarian (Sadie Clayton) and becomes a fixture in the local community. Both authors have great fun transforming the unstable facts of the assassination plots into games of narrative join-the-dots. (I myself would have stopped Herman's Hermits.) This starting point means that 11.22.63 follows the same trajectory as James Ellroy's seminal novel about the Kennedy assassination, American Tabloid. 11.22.63 is unusually sensitive to cause and effect to the knowledge that one good turn doesn't necessarily lead to another.Įpping rewinds to Maine in autumn 1958 – hence the choice of saving JFK. This more than justifies King's time-travelling conceit. Epping encounters flat tires, tumbles down stairs and, ultimately, far worse on his way to achieving his goal. The most ingenious of these is that while history can be changed, it resists such attempts with all its might. Al is one of many enjoyable, if slightly clunky plot devices: ditto the prefatory murder story set in 1958.

Stephen king 11.22 63