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Firestarter

** By Stephen King. I read this about 10 years ago and hardly remembered any of it. After re-reading it, I'm not surprised; compared to other King books from that period (1971-81), the plot seemed very formulaic. Still it's an entertaining read. There's no question that King's a wonderful storyteller. Most obviously, this is a book about government conspiracy. The premise is, what happens when 2 subjects from a "psych experiment" (actually administration of a dangerous experimental drug developed by a CIA-like agency) produce off-spring? (Answer: a little girl with pyrokinesis, played by a cute little Drew Barrymore in the movie version.) And what happens when the agency decides it's time to get its hands on that little girl? To be fair, I think I should explain what I mean by a formulaic plot. This is the basic structure that is followed in a few early books: 1) Heroes have not yet encountered the evil firsthand in the front-story, but we know something is up; 2) Evil power gets its paws directly on the heroes; 3) Unbeknownst to the evil power, the heroes manage to regain/develop their powers; 4) Meanwhile the evil power is overreaching itself and as a result is weakening; 5) Big showdown in which heroes' new/regained powers and the evil's weakness collide for an ending where at least one hero comes out alive, at least one hero is dead, and most of the bad guys are dead except a few to continue the evil legacy. Maybe this is a decent formula to continually reuse, for this sort of story that King was working with at that time. However, I also happen to know that those were part of the drugged-out King years, so it's unlikely that he was performing at his best. Also, The Green Mile (see Joe's note and my comments) is incredibly fresh in comparison, and releases some wonderful surprises throughout the book. It's nice to get better over time, isn't it?

Posted by Lisa on November 12, 2001 03:36 PM