It's for you! (Cell - Stephen King)

Member Name: SWSt

Product:	Cell - Stephen King
Date:	12/11/07 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gripping storyline, chillingly plausible

Disadvantages: Paper thin characters, derivative of some of King's other works

It was only a matter of time before Stephen King turned his attention to one of the blessings and curses and of modern life: the humble mobile phone. In Cell, a virus sent down the phone turns anyone who using it at the time into a zombie. The book follows the survival efforts of a small, unaffected group.

I always feel that King is at his best when he bases his stories essentially in the real world and gives them a savage twist towards darkness. “It” is one of my favourite King books, along with The Stand. And it’s The Stand that Cell is most reminiscent of – the same post-apocalyptic nightmare fight to survive. Unlike his monster stories, this is something which feasibly could happen, which makes it all the more disturbing. It’s not a “horror” book in the sense of lots of bloody deaths, but it does have quite an unsettling atmosphere.

King’s genius is that he takes a simple story and makes it incredibly gripping. In the case of Cell, it’s actually quite difficult to see how and why it works, but it does. Very little actually happens at all, yet somehow, it is interesting and compelling. The characters spend around 400 pages or so wandering around, making occasional discoveries about the “Phone Crazies” and talking about what to do next. In most hands, this would be pretty dull. In King’s hands, it becomes a gripping tale of survival, which marks a welcome return to they tone of his earlier works. It’s also a plot riddled with inconsistencies and unlikely coincidences. These do occasionally become annoying (particularly towards the end of the book when things are stretched to breaking point), but for the most part, it doesn’t detract too much from the story.

As well as a fairly bland plot, the book has pretty two-dimensional characters. Despite the fact that we spend so much time in the company of around half a dozen people, we find out very little about them. These are King’s usual lazily sketched, almost stereotypical characters: the intelligent, gifted artist worried about his family, the sociology professor who loves to lecture his new found friends, the pleasant but slightly fussy gay man, the sparky teenager etc. These are characters King has used time and time again in some form or other. There are vague attempts to give them some kind of emotional depth (the gay man upset about having to let his cat go; the artist on a quest to find his young son etc.), but they are mostly unsuccessful and almost an irrelevancy. We are no wiser about the characters at the end of the book than we are at the beginning. Again, this should be annoying, but somehow it isn’t.

The reason for this is that King is a born storyteller. It doesn’t matter that the story is fairly mediocre or the characters are thinly written. King lets things unveil in such a vivid and realistic way that you can almost see it happening. It gets off to a cracking start – within just a few pages, all hell breaks loose and the society we have known collapses. It grabs your attention from the off. After that, things slow down a little as we are introduced to the main characters. Despite their shallowness, you do get caught up in the fate of these people and you want to find out what happens to them. Two hundred or so pages of people wandering around should be dull, yet it isn’t, thanks to King’s writing style and his ability to make even the mundane interesting. Even so, King recognises that this is not enough, so around halfway through, he introduces another element of danger which serves to boost the interest levels and kick the plot on towards it conclusion. It’s masterful storytelling and is the kind of writing King hasn’t achieved for quite some time.

Some of these strengths are also a downside, though. Cell is very much a companion piece to The Stand, and King comes very close to plagiarising his own earlier work. Certainly, readers of that book will know how this one is going to end long before it reaches its conclusion. It uses a very similar set up, and very similar ideas to resolve the events. That’s not to say it’s not a suitable ending, it just lacks a certain amount of originality.

Some people may get to the end of the book and feel cheated, as it doesn’t offer any real answers or explanations to the events, nor are all the loose ends tied up. Characters come up with theories and ideas about what has happened and why, but these are never confirmed or denied. Equally, several of the characters (literally) just wander off into the sunset at the end of the book and are never heard of again. It’s as if King wasn’t quite sure what to do with them – a standard “happy” ending would have been inappropriate, but he didn’t want to end on a deeply sad note. So, in the end, he just left them. It’s frustrating that, having spent 400 pages in the company of these people, they just vanish, leaving lots of unanswered questions.

Another problem is one which afflicts many of King’s books: it’s about 30 pages too long. The book reaches a natural conclusion… and then he feels the need to carry on with one of the sub-plots. This would have been fine had it been worthwhile, but it isn’t. It’s so weak, pointless and deeply unlikely that it spoils what has gone before. The tone of it is completely at odds with the rest of the book and it jars badly. Worse still, it’s not even properly resolved, so you get to the end of it and think “what was the point in that?” King’s intention is clearly to leave things open-ended - the reader is to decide happens next for themselves. Yet his “first” ending also did that and was far superior. It does leave a sour taste in the mouth and slightly colours the enjoyment of the rest of the book.

Despite these weaknesses, Cell is still one of King’s better recent books. Whilst it is very reminiscent (and derivative) of The Stand, there is enough of an original story to make it worthwhile. For the most part, it’s gripping, interesting and compelling. It’s just a shame it’s let down by a weak, unconvincing ending.

Basic Information
----------------------
The Cell
Stephen King
Hodder & Stoughton, 2006
ISBN: 978-0340921449 (hardback)

Available from Amazon from around £11 new or a penny used. Also available in paperback.

Summary: A return to form from the Master of Horror