But given how this novel was positioned ( this NY Times piece, e.g.) as a a real literary leap for King, I thought it should be held up to some literary standards, as opposed to just saying I liked it because it was a fast read and the action was cool - both of which are true. I tried to consider this novel as simply a novel, not a Stephen King novel, and I'm sure many King fans will scream about how wrong that approach is. (".the book’s broad conspiratorial strokes become farfetched." understates a NY Times review.) The two sides collide in increasingly clunkily plotted and laughable ways. Big Jim and his ever-increasing band of nogoodniks are opposed by a small band of rebels for whom common sense, decency, and the welfare of the town are, of course, their guiding principles.
To zero in on specifics: This caricature of a small town, populated with a bunch of bumpkins, is led by Big Jim Rennie, a religious, self-righteous, hypocritical despot (he's almost EXACTLY the same character as the Warden in The Shawshank Redemption, to give you a frame of reference).
Not one single character in this supposedly character-centric novel has any nuance or depth whatsoever. evil.Ĭhester's Mill, Maine, is supposed to be a microcosm of American culture in general, and the political culture war specifically, but the people who populate this small town of King's imagination are nothing but tropes and types. And hence there's no real conflict, other than the obvious and predictable good vs.
The bad guys do increasingly bad things, and the good guys scramble to stop them. But the main reason this novel failed for me is that these characters are rendered as flimsy stereotypes of real people and they always do exactly what you'd expect. This novel is supposed to be about characters, and how they respond to their dire circumstances. Under this dome, however, the chaos is rather predictable. As you'd imagine, especially in the world of Stephen King, chaos ensues. It's hard to imagine more fertile ground for a thrilling novel - a small town in Maine is trapped under an impenetrable dome, its citizens left to their own devices.
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