UNDER THE DOME: A Review

During the 21st century the arrival of a new Stephen King book has been greeted with mixed emotions. Each new volume of King's so-called masterpiece, The Dark Tower, was released -thicker and messier than each previous book - and stinkers like Dreamcatcher, From A Buick 8 and Cell were unleashed upon the public, so the arrival of an 1100 page new King novel could be viewed as either an act of torture or a guilty pleasure. I'm happy to report that Under The Dome is less pain and more joy.

Dome is one of those works of fiction that manages to be both pulp and high art at the same time, a trick King has pulled off several times in his career (think The Stand, The Shining and Misery).

The town of Chester's Mill, Maine - just up the road from the equally fictional Castle Rock is minding its own business one dazzling October day when an unseen force field descends upon it, slicing in two pretty much anything that was crossing the edge of town at that moment.
What happens in ensuing days is even more unsettling. Except for Internet service and spotty cell-phone signals, the town is isolated and imprisoned in plain sight. And inside the dome, society slowly, inexorably, almost methodically begins to fall apart. It's a weird combination of Lord of the Flies meets Our Town with some Peyton Place tossed in for fun.

The chief protagonist, Dale Barbara, is a just-retired Army man who fought in Iraq and did some things he isn't entirely proud of. He has retired to Chester's Mill as a fry cook, trying to lay low. But in the days before "Dome Day," he runs afoul of some of the local cretins and becomes persona non grata through no fault of his own. In fact, he is trying to leave town when the dome falls and narrowly escapes becoming one of its first victims.

Barbara becomes one of the focal points in the us-vs-them panic that overtakes Chester's Mill like a slow-motion tidal wave, pushed along by the other focal point - "Big Jim" Rennie, the town boss, who is about as prosaically malevolent (to the point of ridiculous caricature) a character that King has ever devised and who has a genuinely creepy son to match.

First, THE GOOD:

• King is always at his best when writing about small town blue collar folks, and Dome is peopled with dozens of great characters, deftly sketched into life by King's great and casual observations.The story practically gallops. For such a hefty book there are almost no tedious sections -can you say that about equally-sized books like Finnegan's Wake, Gravity's Rainbow or any Tom Clancy novel? It is tightly structured and it propelled toward an increasingly bleak and inevitable (almost) apocalyptic conclusion. Lots of people die ... including many of the good guys.
• Kudos to King for some fun cross-referencing of another fictional character. King is a huge fan of Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" books. For the uninitiated, Reacher is a retired military police officer who lives a nomadic drifter's life and is constantly getting into dangerous situations. One of the Dome characters, police officer Jackie Wettington, was a former MP whose training under Reacher comes in handy toward the end of the story. Well, done, Mr. King!

THE BAD:

• King often switches into the annoying old fashioned narrative device of addressing the reader directly, from a traditional third person past tense view into a cinematic, omniscient present tense view - "and now, dear reader, we go look at the events transpiring at the diner" - which is jarring and annoying. Just because Charles Dickens used the device in the 19th century doesn't mean its a good idea.
• Equally annoying - not to mention downright idiotic - is the narrating a few sections of the story from the viewpoint of a dog. The dog is not only able to understand conversations but makes observations on the conversations. WHAT?
• The mystery of the Dome is, at best, laughable. And the reason the Dome exists at all is ... all we know is based upon the speculation of the characters. The removal of the Dome at the last moment is ... well, unbelievable.

However, the end and resolution are less important than the path taken to get there. The book has very little supernatural elements, but if you've been paying attention to King's career, the point has never truly been the bump-in-the-night creatures. What King is best at portraying is the truly disturbing and horrific reality of human nature.

BIBLIO SAYS: Recommended.

COMPANION READ: One Second After by William R. Forstchen.