A Hell of a Wrong Number! (Cell - Stephen King)

Member Name: QueenElf

Product:	Cell - Stephen King
Date:	30/03/08 (90 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast paced, easy to read.

Disadvantages: Its just not King as his fans know him.

At the risk of sounding like Annie in Stephen King's book, "Misery", I'm at least one of his best fans, (though not his number one fan). After a somewhat dry period I am now catching up on his latest works. I've just finished reading Cell and I've got a copy of Lisey's story waiting to read. Now King has written an awful lot of books and I feel privileged to have read nearly all of them. I discovered his books in my late teens and I've read all except the full "Dark Tower" series. Somehow I just couldn't get into this in the same way as his novels.
So I regard myself as somewhat of an expert when it comes to his books.
After reading "Carrie" and "The Shining", I started to buy his books in the hardback version and at one time I owned about twenty of these. I had a house fire in 1997 and lost all my books, but I've since managed to replace most of the collection, even though I had to settle for many of the paperback versions as I could never afford many of those older books.
I even read and identified the Bachman books, long before anyone else even had an inkling of the true author. (My letters were never answered).
I've read his collaborations with Peter Straub, a great personal friend of King's and a spectacular writer in his own way. I've also read King's non-fiction works. I know this may seem a long introduction, but I'm stating my own credentials for a reason. I really do know this authors works inside out.

Cell is an interesting book and a departure from King's normal writings. The basic story mirrors some of his earlier ones, in particular, The Stand, but its roots go far deeper. Maybe even as far back as Salem's Lot and that was, I think, his second book.

In essence the plot is fairly simple. On October 1st in the present (at the time of writing), the books hero, Clayton Riddell, is feeling particularly happy about a meeting in Boston, in which his artwork is about to make him comfortably wealthy. He's thinking about his son, Johnny and his estranged wife Sharon, in a positive mood.
The event which eventually becomes known as "the pulse" starts at 3.03pm when a woman who answers her mobile phone suddenly becomes as feral as a wild animal. Clay witnesses this incident and many more in a space of minutes, his initial puzzlement changing to alarm and then full-scale panic as people start to act like wild animals. Some attack others while all around him there are shouts, screams, and sounds of gunfire, airplane crashing and buildings on fire.
Civilisation is slipping into a new dark age, heralded by something which affects the brains of those who listen to their mobile phone. And in a young, trendy place like Boston that happens to be many of its citizens. By the time that Clayton starts to grasp what is happening, he's already helped out another man and a young girl who is a victim of cell-phone violence. For Clay doesn't own a mobile phone, but over a hundred miles away his young son does have a cell-phone and from what is happening it could be only a matter of time before his boy might succumb to the bloody carnage of those driven into madness by their phones. In a race against time he is forced to walk across country, taking some of his new-found friends with him. But the phone-crazies, as they are dubbed, are starting to band together in the worst possible way. Could this be the end of the world? To Clay and his small band it seems like it.

This departure from King's normal plots may be seen as refreshing by many of his fans. In fact I thought it sounded good, as I'm one of those rare people who just cannot abide mobile phones. However, the reasons put forward by various characters in the book seemed to be implausible to me. A terrorist group who wanted to kill the majority of mankind? Hardly likely since such groups rely heavily on this technology. What could be the gain since every person who put the phone to their ear seemed determined to kill anyone around, including themselves? The sane survivors become too frightened to try to listen in to radios and there are no TV broadcasts to say what is happening.
No explanation is made about the many car crashes that block the main roads, forcing the survivors to go on foot in small groups of very few people, some armed with guns and knives. This is where the whole plot starts to fall down.

King's characters come from all kinds of backgrounds and they rarely act as the people in this book do. Clay's small group are repeatedly shunned by others, something that doesn't normally happen. In fact the characters themselves seem two-dimensional, almost as though King couldn't be bothered to put that energy and compassion into his characters. There are some parts where they do become more human, but it happens much later in the book. When his characters fill out they become more natural, but still don't have that flair of being just a bit more than they should be.


In fact the first part of the book puzzled me so much I couldn't even find anything that led me to believe that King had actually written it. It did strike me within a few pages, but I thought that maybe he was changing his style of writing. That's happened a lot lately to some other of my favourite authors. By now I'm getting paranoid and thinking of conspiracy theories. Has Stephen King been kidnapped and made to write completely different to his normal way of writing? Flat, boring characters, listless dialogue and although there is plenty of action it's happening somewhere else? This is not SK at all.
I write myself (that's not a plug by the way), and each writer has a sort of signature, a way of writing that is unique to him or her. It's something that cannot be duplicated and in its absence there's a huge question mark. To write in a style that hasn't changed much in thirty plus years just can't be done. Somewhere along the line the author is going to write in his normal way. Its like speech, you can't hide a certain accent.

So what is going on? I watched a programme some years ago about King's failing sight. Perhaps it had got to the point where he has to dictate? That can certainly inhibit any author. But there was nothing on the Net to suggest his sight had got to this point.
I finished the book and found that there was some of King's basic language in the writing later on. Like a detective I was looking for those certain signs that bespoke the author.
King has a very unique way of putting in a character's thoughts. It's usually in brackets and can be as little as one word. It's also a way of putting in the thought behind the main thought, if you know what I mean. In an early part of Cell, Clayton is leaving Boston with his small band of followers and thinks that the moon is like "a horror-comic moon." I would have expected something subtler and more like King.
e.g. Clay noticed the orange eye of the (devil) moon. That's a very rough example, but other King fans should have an idea of what I'm trying to say. To me these are King's signature words, his truthspeak, for want of a better word.

It's so personal to King that I can't imagine him not writing this way. There are also certain themes that crop up in many of his books. One is the flocking of birds that appear in the book "It" and also in "The Dark Half". Then there's a way of thinking which is just a bit uncomfortable. I think that he says things we all might think but never put into words. That feeling which suggests not all's right in a relationship. The suggestion of a darkness in every one of us. I think of King as a truthful man who dares to show some of his demons. So why is this book so empty of that passion, for want of a better word?

Maybe King had help writing it. The idea is good enough to come from him, but even his little quirks are written in as more than they should be. The child's sneaker? It appears in at least four of his books but gains an importance here that just doesn't ring true. He's a master of understatement, never having to explain his concepts.

I did enjoy the book, though I'm still not sure that King wrote it. Gave it birth, maybe, but the ending was poor, even though the sentiment was there in spades. And when Has King ever left a story hanging? The writing is that of a younger man who knows King well, maybe even his son?
Would I recommend it? As a puzzle, yes. I don't want to give any of King's books less than a four star, but there are just too many loose ends.
My copy was a birthday present and priced at £4.99 from Amazon. Used copies are available from 1p plus postage.
My apologies for the length of the review. I just felt that something was missing and hoped that other readers might add to this puzzle. I know that many readers find King's books too long, but take away the suspense, the things that can't be believed in and what is left?
This is not a horror story...it's a carefully contrived action book with hardly any plot and disappointing characters. Sorry, but to me it's a cop-out.

©Lisa Fuller. March 2008.

Summary: Interesting in parts, but lacks King's finesse.