The blue caretakers came for her in the night and they saw her no more.
It’s two days until Halloween, and what’s more appropriate for the final week of Spooky Book Month than the latest Stephen King novel?
Luke Ellis has what can only be described as the perfect life. At twelve years old he’s a genius, literally. Eidetic memory, able to grasp concepts that are way over the heads of his parents and most of his teachers, he’s looking forward to getting two college degrees. At two colleges. At the same time.
He’s also a hell of a nice kid who gets along with everyone. His parents love him to pieces, and they’re determined to make sure Luke gets all the education he’s craving.
Then one night special operatives break into the Ellis home, kidnap Luke, and murder his parents in their sleep.
Yes, it happens that fast. Life as Luke knows it is over, and it’s only going to get worse.
The book actually starts with former police officer Tim Jamieson – who lost his career after a split-second bad decision and some terrible luck – as he travels somewhat aimlessly across the country and winds up in the tiny town of DuPray, South Carolina. It’s a surprisingly low-key few chapters, filled with the kind of intricate details about the mundane settings and the quirky people that Stephen King uses to completely immerse you in the story. But all too soon we switch to Luke and pizza-night with his parents a few hours before some very businesslike assassins turn him into an orphan.
He would have given anything, maybe his very soul, if he could wake up to sunlight lying across his bed like a second coverlet and smell frying bacon downstairs.
Luke wakes up from a drugged sleep in a strange facility with unsettlingly cheerful motivational posters (I CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY). The handful of other residents are also kidnapped children, all of whom have some minor psychic talent like Luke has, maybe just enough to move papers around or sense what someone is feeling. He’s told by Mrs. Sigsby, the head of the Institute, that he’s here to serve his country, in ways that she’s not going to explain. But not to worry, once he goes through all the “tests” (again, no explanation) and graduates from the Front Half of the Institute to the Back Half, he’ll perform a few “services” (no she won’t say what they are). After a few weeks he’ll have his memories of the place wiped, and he’ll be returned to his parents who are, of course, perfectly fine and not at all executed.
Luke doesn’t believe any of this. None of the children do. At the same time they have to believe it. Believing it means staying in a world where grownups tell the truth, your parents aren’t dead, the strange injections won’t really hurt you, and one day you’ll go home. Sure, it’ll all turn out to be a lie eventually, but that doesn’t have to happen now.
He was only twelve, and understood that his experience of the world was limited, but one thing he was quite sure of: when someone said trust me, they were usually lying through their teeth.
It helps that Luke makes friends instantly, starting with the delightful Kalisha and her candy cigarettes. Kalisha tells Luke the rules, and shows him how to be at least comfortable in the Institute. Good behavior is rewarded with tokens, tokens can be used to buy candy and snacks. Or cigarettes. Or tiny bottles of booze (remember, these are all kids, some as young as eight). There’s a cafeteria, a playground, a TV in every room, and people who bond together the way you only do when you’re all enduring the same thing and everyone just needs to laugh and cry and somehow live in this vital time in childhood when everything’s changing. With the new best friends and cool vending machines and the possibility of having a crush on the cute newcomer, it’s a lot like a trip to a really cool summer camp…
…except for the fact that your camp councilors murdered your parents. And there’s every chance that you’re next. Children can graduate to the Back Half with no warning. And none of them ever come back.
I’m not gonna lie, this book was a tough read. The injections and exams pale in comparison to the casual cruelty by the nurses and staff. Slapping is just where it starts; there’s taunts, and cold glares, and “you kids today have it so easy” (I wanted to jump through the page and smack a bitch for that one), and all the other signs that everyone in the Institute has “othered” the children in their heads so they don’t feel even a little sympathy for them. Stephen King knows how to dig right down to what bothers people, and watching kids suffer this much is really unpleasant.
Luke had never met a merciless adult, but he thought he might be facing one now.
Of course Luke has to make an escape attempt, and of course my heart was in my throat the entire time. Whenever he talked to someone I’d be chewing my nails thinking oh God oh God no one’s going to believe him because he’s just a runaway kid and his story is crazy. It helped that the chapters are minuscule, sometimes as short as a single page, so I’d fly through huge sections of the book in a matter of hours. But I was still jittering with low-level anxiety most of the time.
The chapters told from the point of view of the Institute staff were easier to read, partly because I could be glad when something would go VERY WRONG for them, but also because the inner workings of this unexplained organization would always be fascinating. Just like King gives you all the details about the setting (the furniture, the magazines on the table, the quality of the light streaming in through the window at sunset), King loves to do a deep dive into the intricacies of everyone’s head: the cheery Dr. Hendricks with his hee-haw laugh, the security chief Stackhouse, the terrifying Mrs. Sigsby who’s the worst of all of them…
…and who unfortunately came across as the least believable character. With everyone else you can see there was an actual progression somewhere from human being, to damaged human being, to someone who’s doing horrible things for what they’re very sure is a good cause (and worse, the people who learned to enjoy it). But Mrs. Sigsby felt to me like the person who’s only the bad guy because that’s what’s required by the plot. Sure, she thinks she’s committing atrocities “for the greater good”. But she doesn’t seem to actually understand how other human beings think, she only speaks in threats and demands, and she’s infuriatingly unable to understand why anyone would say “no” to her. It’s a shame, King did a better job of this sort of thing with Bobby’s sister in Tommyknockers; here it was a weird combination of scary and irritating.
Stressful reading and some slightly thin characters aside, I really did enjoy this one. The friendships between the children of the institute kept making me smile (to make it that much more of a gut punch when someone is spirited away to the Back Half). When we eventually find out what’s inside the Back Half it’s the kind of surreal horror that King does so well. There are moments of improbable kindness, garden-variety betrayal, a small town being awesome, some super-satisfying moments of psychic violence and an awe-inspiring final battle.
The book is also obviously influenced by current events. It’s important to know that up front, because if you don’t like what Stephen King posts on his Twitter feed then you may have GREAT BIG PROBLEMS with some of the things he’s saying here. Agree with him or not, I think we need to keep questioning ourselves when we decide that something is “worth” the torment and death of people who have never done anything to us. What kind of world do we make with these actions? What kind of person are we becoming when we let them happen?
Cover artwork by Will Staehle