“Do you believe in love at first sight?”…”I don’t know,” he said. “Do you believe in love before that?” CBR9 Review 56.

Apparently, I’m in the middle of a massive re-reading binge. I didn’t even realize it, but most of the books on the list of “reviews I need to catch up on” are for books that I’ve not only read before, but have also reviewed before. Attachments is one of those books — first reviewed in CBR5, it was a book I loved so much, I was afraid to reread it.

What if I didn’t love it as much as I did last time? Wouldn’t that sort of ruin it for me?

Never fear!

Not only did I still love it, I might actually love it more than I did the first time. Callooh! Callay!

Yes, Lincoln’s inability to stop reading Beth and Jennifer’s emails is still a touchy subject for me. But he owns up to it and he apologizes sincerely for it. And really, it started out as part of his job, and that job was ridiculous. So, I forgive him.

And I forgive Beth for being generally creepy in her obsession with him. Following him to the movies and to his house. And for her super forward behavior towards him at the movies near the end. That was kind of weird. But I forgive her.

Because the rest of the book is so absolutely perfect that I don’t mind. I know this is super short, but let’s face it: most of you who are ever going to read this book have already done so. A few words from me probably isn’t going to sway you either way. Its romantic and funny and honest and sad and PERFECTION. It made me sigh out loud. Read it.

I was working in a big office at my very first job in 1999, waiting for Y2K to come and cripple our computer systems. I assume that at the time, some tech person was reading my emails to my friends. We sent around 90210 and Melrose Place episode recaps filled with profanity and tawdry details. I hope that tech person enjoyed them. I didn’t ever get in trouble, so maybe they did.

 

 

Life lesson from Uncle Stevie: You always — always, always, always — fall from the topmost grid of the ceiling that you’re using for a ladder in the hall of the maximum security prison that has gone sliding down the unstable remains of a former coal mountain. CBR9 Review 55.

Sleeping Beauties is a gigantic, door-stopping tome that tells the story of a world without women. What would happen if suddenly all of the world’s women were suddenly asleep, and the men were left to their own devices, without supervision and guidance from the fairer sex? How long until guns are used to make every single decision?

As it turns out, less than a week.

Uncle Stevie and his son Owen are trying something interesting here, but it mostly didn’t work for me. Here’s what I loved:

• As usual, the first third of the book is just an introduction to the characters and the town where this bizarre story takes place — a small Appalachian town in West Virginia called Dooling. We see the handsome pool guy cleaning out pools and giving garden advice. We sit with some high school kids arguing about whether or not they should go to the Arcade Fire show. We are introduced to some strung out folks doing meth in a trailer (with their very own meth lab in the shed outside!). We peek in on the lives of the women who are incarcerated at the women’s prison just outside of town. And we meet Sheriff Lila Norcross and her husband, Dr. Clint Norcross (who just happens to be the psychiatrist up at the prison). There’s nobody out there that does this kind of writing better than King. He doesn’t just introduce names and characteristics — by the end of the first section of the story, you really feel like you know these people and the town that they live in.
• I also enjoyed the general mystery of the story: a sleeping sickness called Aurora suddenly sweeps across the globe. As women fall asleep, they immediately become wrapped in cocoons of unknown origin. Some women fight it for as long as they can, using drugs and exercise to keep from falling asleep, but some women gladly welcome this mysterious slumber as a way to escape their day-to-day lives. If anyone attempts to cut the cocoon off of a sleeping woman, they are met with immediate and gruesome violence. These “sleeping beauties” just want to go back to sleep. DO NOT DISTURB. But what happens to them when they fall asleep? Will they ever wake up?
• I liked seeing some of the characters redeem themselves. A meth addled plastic surgeon becomes one of the story’s most trusted voices of reason. A crazy (really. much too crazy.) prison inmate becomes a brave defender of womenkind. A woman so addicted to drugs that she prostitutes herself turns into a wise, horse loving, leader of women.
• I loved that he wrote this with his son. I read Owen King’s book Double Feature a few years ago, and I didn’t love it. But like the books that King wrote with Peter Straub, the story was told smoothly and seamlessly. It was impossible to tell who wrote what.

Sadly, I think there was more that I didn’t really like.

• Most of the male characters were horrible and unredeemable. They had issues with women in positions of power. They had anger problems. They beat their partners. They sexually abused the inmates. They drank too much. They solved all of their problems with weapons.
• I don’t really want to get into a feminist rant here, but the whole basic plot is somewhat problematic (WOMEN ARE ALL THAT IS GOOD. MEN ARE BAD AND LIKE GUNS.) in that it was written by two men. Yes, these two men in particular have some wonderful, strong women in their lives. But come on.
• There was a young girl named Nana. I cannot accept this as a name. I apologize if you or a loved one is named Nana. Unless its your grandmother. That’s fine.
• I know that King LOVES to kill off your favorite characters Joss Whedon-style, but I hated when and how SPOILER Garth Flickinger died. He was quickly becoming one of my favorite King characters of all time.
• While I sort of liked the fact that the women of Dooling (I GUESS THIS IS A SPOILER?) had been transported to a mystical Dooling of another world to re-start society, I really, really, really didn’t like the character of Eve Black, who apparently brought Aurora with her when she came to our world. She was too magical, too quirky, too beautiful. Ugh. (But I did like that she was supposedly the inspiration for Shakespeare to write the Queen Mab speech in Romeo & Juliet. Anything that gives me the opportunity to post this:

• Lastly, I get that Uncle Stevie has a lot of power in the publishing world. But this book could easily have been 200 pages shorter. Cut the entire plot about the moronic drug dealers with the rocket launcher and the arm wrestling guard, don’t describe every single inmate in the prison, and we would be good to go.

And yes, in case you were wondering, this book suffers from Stephen King ending syndrome.