- Hardcover: 558 pages
- Publisher: Putnam Pub Group (T); First Edition edition (Nov 1987)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0399133143
- ISBN-13: 978-0399143946
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.5 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 819,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Tommyknockers
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Review
‘An incredibly gifted writer, whose writing, like Truman Capote’s, is so fluid that you often forget that you’re reading’ (Guardian )
‘A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel...brilliantly done’ (The Sunday Times )
‘Splendid entertainment...Stephen King is one of those natural storytellers...getting hooked is easy’ (Frances Fyfield, Express ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
‘A writer of excellence...King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel...brilliantly done’ (The Sunday Times )
‘Splendid entertainment...Stephen King is one of those natural storytellers...getting hooked is easy’ (Frances Fyfield, Express ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Frances Fyfield, Express
‘Splendid entertainment...Stephen King is one of those natural storytellers...getting hooked is easy’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The story starts off at a pace and over the first 200 hundred or so pages I found myself becoming engrossed in the story and the two main characters ... I found myself thinking that the book wasn't half bad considering some of the poor reviews I had read .. and then SK goes off on a tangent and spends best part of 400 pages ignoring the characters he had built up in earlier part of story and provides up with mind numbing insights into the disintergrating lifes of the past and present inhabitants of Haven.
Part 3 of the book concentrates on the becoming of the Tommyknockers ... shoudn't have bothered ... killer vending machines ... please
All in .. best avoided.
Part 3 of the book concentrates on the becoming of the Tommyknockers ... shoudn't have bothered ... killer vending machines ... please
All in .. best avoided.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The start of Stephen King's 1987 novel "The Tommyknockers" has always reminded me of the set up of one of my all-time favorite science fiction-horror films, "5 Million Years to Earth" (a.k.a. "Quatermass and the Pit" in the U.K.). A writer named Roberta Anderson, living on the outskirts of the small town of Haven, Maine, is out looking for firewood in the forest behind her house when she stumbles over three inches of metal. She assumes that she has stumbled over a beer can left behind by a logger, but instead she discovers the metal was solid. What she has found is a space ship, buried in the earth for millions of years, but still vibrating faintly. So, Bobbi begins to dig the giant craft out of the earth by herself, soon to be joined by her friend and former lover Jim Gardener, and by the strange advanced technology that they are suddenly inspired to create. But as they uncover more of the ship Bobbi and Jim, as well as the rest of the citizens of Haven, all start to change.
Up to that point "The Tommyknockers" is pretty good and I have to admit that I thought the idea of alien technology working into the ancient rubric that there are some things human beings were not meant to tamper with was enough to sustain the story. But instead we are treated to a malevolent presence that has evil designs on the citizen of Haven and that seemed to me like overkill. Add to that the fact the two main characters are writers (King dedicates the novel to his wife Tabitha, who is also a novelist), and "The Tommyknockers" becomes a bit too self referential for me as does the whole subplot about Gardener’s writer’s block. This novel represents the start of a period in King's writing where my recurring complaint was that the great set up never resulted in an ending that was equal to the task, although we do have a sort of reverse "deus ex machina" at the end of this one. But the discovery of the ship and the weird inventions people in Haven start putting together out of odds, ends and batteries is pretty good stuff.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is simply amazing. Yes, it may be overly long and slightly tedious in places (particularly near the end), but it does have some fantastic moments including every one of the character sub-stories, particularly the introduction of the middle-aged, gold-toothed, foul mouthed, drug-snorting Sissy which breathes new life into the book in its later stages. The references to other King books (It, Firestarter) are a nice touch too. Obviously people who knock this book don't have very long attention spans and are not aware that it takes great skill to keep a reader entertained over such a long story. A King classic, only the Stand is better.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Frustrating Read
First of, I'll start by saying I'm a big Stephen King fan and while I've obviously enjoyed some more than others, this is probably the first I've actively disliked. Read more
Published 3 days ago by Gavin
Masterful
Dont be mislead by some of the negative reviews here. I am not a blinkered SK worshipper but I am well read and can discern between the good the bad and the mediocre. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Alan Milligan
Don't knock it.
Tommyknockers was a troubled book from a troubled author. At the time of writing, Stephen King's drink and drug problems were spiralling out of control; the result is this... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Mr Winkie
Grim.
Unlike many of King's other books, there's nothing joyful or uplifting in The Tommyknockers. It's utterly grim and monotonous from start to finish. Read more
Published on 23 Oct 2008 by Cuckoo
TOO LONG, TOO TEDIOUS
The book starts out promisingly enough with a female novelist unearthing a spaceship buried on her land. Read more
Published on 22 Aug 2008 by Carl Hughes
A very good book, half SF, half horror story, just a little short of a...
I first read this book ages ago, in the 80s, and I didn't like it at all - but it was clearly because of a horribly bad French translation (in this time I couldn't read English). Read more
Published on 5 Sep 2007 by Maciej
What a fantastic, engrossing read...
I bought this book many years ago, but have read it at least six times, and have to say it never bores me... Read more
Published on 30 Aug 2007 by Mr. Bruno Gissara
The Tommyknockers
Stephen King heads into outright science fiction territory for this tale of the discovery of a flying saucer buried under a small town, and the effects it has on the inhabitants as... Read more
Published on 27 Jun 2007 by Jane Aland
2nd becoming
This was only the 2nd Stephen King book i had read (back in '89), and loved it. After reading some unfavourable reviews here i thought i would re-read to see if my teenage... Read more
Published on 24 Jan 2007 by Simon Edwards
Loved it
In the top five of my all time favourite Stephen King novels.
I could at this point go on to write a really long review of this book but I'm not going to. Read more
I could at this point go on to write a really long review of this book but I'm not going to. Read more
Published on 18 Aug 2006 by P. Bessant
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