Bag of Bones was first published in 1998, shortly before my 10th birthday. It has a lot in common with Rebecca, another book I read a few years ago, although it treats the core elements differently.
This is one of the many novels in which the main character is a writer. If I recall correctly, this was the book where I first found out that King’s novels weren’t published in written order, though it might have been Lisey's Story; sometimes, he wrote too prolifically and would stash a few, as the character Mike Noonan does. When I started this project I did consider making the effort to find out the order in which the novels were actually written and to read them in that order, but I came to the conclusion that that would be unreasonably difficult.
The other day I thought about the fact that Shakespeare’s plays begin to have happier, more optimistic endings as he got older. That was one of the reasons I wanted to read an author’s work in chronological order; to see how it changed as they aged. When I did this with Lisa Jewell a few years ago there were a number of changes. What stood out most was her concern about children, after she had her own.
King’s writing is so prolific that I actually find it harder to step back and see trends. It’s like trying to watch a plant growing by staring at it for every hour of the day. There are trends; for instance, Rage and Carrie, both about teenagers, were written when King was younger – although The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which focuses on a young girl, was published in 1999, when King was 52 and presumably written when he was at least in his 40s. His children make a difference as well; many characters are openly based on King’s family, and he does have a gift for observation.
I remembered Bag of Bones wrong; the first time I read it, it felt like it was a lot more about Sara and a lot less about Maddie. This time, I was waiting for the whole bit with Maddie to get out of the way so we could get to the main story about Sara. I was about three hours from the end – audiobook – when I finally twigged that Maddie was part of the main story.
The audiobook includes an interview with King on the topic of audiobooks. When he first wanted to listen to them, very few unabridged recordings were available, so he would pay his children $18 for each ninety-minute tape recording of a book he wanted to have read. It really is no wonder that King’s two sons, Owen King and Joe Hill, both grew up to be authors.
What is interesting is that relatively few of King’s characters are LGBT, despite the fact that his daughter Naomi is openly gay. Naomi’s life is less open than her brothers’, as she is less of a public figure. Perhaps King also considers her life to be private. I didn't realise, until I read this article, that she's a wheelchair user. I'm not sure at which point in her life she began using a wheelchair, but it would be interesting to see if King's characters start using them more after that point. So far, I think it's only been Paul Sheldon in Misery.
The next work of King’s is The Storm of the Century, a TV series for which he wrote the script. I’ve decided that while I will try to watch the series, I won’t try to hunt down the script to read it. I’ll be moving on to The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon – another book I’ve read before.
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