Hearts in Atlantis (Paperback)

'Hearts In Atlantis' belongs to the second group of works, such as 'The Green Mile' and 'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption'. They are unsettling novels and stories that 'lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried', to quote from 'The Body'.

King's self-proclaimed theme in this latest book is the 60's, a decade that I am too young to have seen. He strikes a deeper chord, however - running through the five moving stories here is a strong motif of good and evil, of crime and retribution. Each important character has a conscious choice to make, and each must eventually accept the consequences of their decision.

As usual King writes with aplomb, and is able to capture convincingly the tone and atmosphere of his times. The supernatural stands out in chilling contrast to his deft treatment of the everyday. He shows remarkable skill in depicting both youth and old age, although if I had one minor complaint it would be that his 11-year-old characters in the first story seem a little precocious.

Resisting considerable temptation, I placed this book on my Christmas List. It left me moved, drained and reappraising my choices and direction in life. I can think of no higher recommendation than to say that I don't know when I will find the strength to pick it up again.

The way the stories all linked together was great. When I noticed it was more than one story i was expecting that it was another short story book but dont be misled all the stories have something to do with the other and they all leave you wondering what else happened next.

Not all my questions were answered about the people involved in the book by the time I finsished it but I was pleased with the ending, which was in my view a very good piece of work.

HEARTS is a series of stories that take place, respectively, in 1960, 1966, 1983, and two in 1999. All are loosely connected through characters we meet in the first, 11-year old Bobby Garfield and his best pals Sully-John and Carol, and one from the group of slightly older boys who torment them, Willie Shearman. Each of the storylines otherwise stands alone, more or less. In 1960, Bobby, a fatherless boy living with an uncaring mother, becomes attached to the world-wise Ted, an old man renting the rooms upstairs who is being hunted by sinister "low men in yellow coats". In 1966, new character Pete is on the verge of flunking out of the university because of his preoccupation with an addictive card game. More important to the book's overall plot, he falls in love with a fellow student, Carol from Story One, and through her discovers the anti-Vietnam peace movement. In 1983, Willie Shearman, a Vietnam veteran, continues to pay a bizarre penance for past sins, chief of which, apparently, was the wrong he did Carol as a boy. In 1999, emotionally and physically scarred Vietnam vet Sully-John remembers his time "in the green". Also in 1999, Carol and Bobby stumble across each other after leading separate lives for almost 40 years. The threads between all five plots are Carol and a beat-up old baseball glove once belonging to Bobby.

This is not one of King's more lucid works. Indeed, the Willie Shearman episode of 1983 needed much more explaining. (My reaction to it was just short of "Huh?!") However, a mediocre book by King is a gem by other standards, so it's impossible not to recommend it on some level. The point the author is trying to make, I think, is that the memories from our formative years, however deformed by succeeding events - in this case the Vietnam conflict - stay with us as powerful emotional catalysts, and perhaps as crippling psychological scars, even unto our twilight years and old age.

The film version of HEARTS IN ATANTIS, based almost solely on the first chapter dealing with the events of 1960, was magical in its use of visual and aural images to evoke that period in the mid-twentieth century when those in childhood, and middle-class America as a whole, were on the verge of losing their innocence. Because both I and the fictional Bobby turned eleven in that year, I could relate. And, I think the book will stir up memories in anyone of my generation, whether he/she fought in Southeast Asia or demonstrated at home.

Not a great book, but worth a read. Definitely see the movie for a more intense burst of the book's flavor.