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Hearts in Atlantis

By Stephen King

(110)

| Mass Market Paperback | 9780743436212

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Book Description

Stephen King's collection of five stories about '60s kids reads like a novel. The best is "Low Men in Yellow Coats," about Bobby Garfield of Harwich, Connecticut, who craves a Schwinn for his 11th birthday. But his widowed mum is impoverished and so bitter that she barely loves him. King is as good as Spielberg or Steven Millhauser at depicting an enchanted kid's-eye view of the world, and his Harwich is realistically luminous to the tiniest detail: kids bashing caps with a smoke-blackened rock; a car grille "like the sneery mouth of a chrome catfish"; a Wild Mouse carnival ride that makes kids "simultaneously sure they were going to live forever and die immediately."

Bobby's mum takes in a lodger, Ted Brautigan, who turns the boy on to great books such as Lord of the Flies. Unfortunately, Ted is being hunted by yellow-jacketed men--monsters from King's Dark Tower novels who take over the shady part of town. They close in on Ted and Bobby, just as a gang of older kids menace Bobby and his girlfriend, Carol. This pointedly echoes the theme of Lord of the Flies (the one book King says he wishes he'd written): war is the human condition. Ted's mind-reading powers rub off a bit on Bobby, granting nightmare glimpses of his mum's assault by her rich, vile, jaunty boss. King packs plenty into 250 pages, using the same trick Bobby discerns in the film Village of the Damned: "The people seemed like real people, which made the make-believe parts scarier."

Vietnam is the otherworldly horror that haunts the remaining four stories. In the title tale, set in 1966, University of Maine college kids play the card game Hearts so obsessively they risk flunking out and getting drafted. The kids discover sex, rock and politics, become war heroes and victims, and spend the '80s and '90s shell-shocked by change. The characters and stories are criss-crossed with connections that sometimes click and sometimes clunk. The most intense Hearts player, Ronnie Malenfant ("evil infant"), perpetrates a My Lai-like atrocity; a nice Harwich girl becomes a radical bomber. King's metaphor for lost '60s innocence is inspired by Donovan's "sweet and stupid" song about the sunken continent, and his stories hail the vanished Atlantis of his youth with deep sweetness and melancholy intelligence. --Tim Appelo

Critics

Hearts in Atlantis By Stephen King

Where were you during the '60s? Whether you served, marched, or missed it all, something in this major new work by Stephen King will put a lump in your throat. Known as the King of Horror, the author's real talent has always been describing the horro ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Tue, 14 Sep 2010

Hearts in Atlantis By Stephen King

Every last word Unabridged audios offer hours and hours of unabridged pleasure and make great gifts for the listeners on your list. Here are a few recent arrivals you might consider. Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen King's latest, is a brilliant collectio ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Tue, 14 Sep 2010

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5 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

The Hearts in Atlantis story is awesome. The rest are so-so.

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Jimmy Impossible said on May 23, 2007 | Add your feedback

Hearts in Atlantis

I find I like this author best when he explores the demons within rather than those external to his characters.

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Readingrat said on Sep 5, 2010 | Add your feedback

ARC

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Becky said on Nov 10, 2008 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

Left the book halfway through. I found the story between the kid and Ted pretty sweet, but lost interest after the supernatural incidents involving the low men in yellow coats.

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ghostboy said on Mar 8, 2008 | Add your feedback