Bag of Bones is partly inspired by Daphne du Maurier's classic Rebecca, but there's more than homage in this novel of horror and romance. Like du Maurier's Manderley, King's scary old place (on the shore of Maine's remote Dark Score Lake) is haunted by the late lady of the manor. There are many gory ghosts afoot, though: men, women, and wailing kids. The hero, a thriller novelist, stirs up hell's plenty of angry shades while investigating his wife's death. It turns out she either had a dark secret herself or was onto some dread scandal lurking in Dark Score Lake. As in King's previous book, Wizard and Glass, the fabric of reality is thin, and nosy narrators are in peril of plunging right out of this world and into a rather hostile otherworld.

Romance in a Haunted Town

In Bag of Bones, Stephen King writes a classic haunted house story with several twists. First, like several of his other stories, the whole town surrounding the house is also haunted. Second, the haunted house story is also intertwined with romance.

In the book, main character Michael Noonan's wife dies within the first two pages of the book. Like many of King's characters, Noonan is a writer. However, he experiences complete writer's block and loneliness after his wife's death. Noonan starts having dreams of his country house, Sarah Laughs in Western Maine and eventually decides to go back to his beloved house even though the dreams are spooky and bespeak of danger.

As soon as he returns to his country house, Noonan realizes that the house is haunted. There are sounds of crying, a presence of something else there, words being formed by the magnetic alphabet on the fridge and other matters. Noonan also gets caught up in a custody battle between a rich man and his poor daughter-in-law/widow.

King tells a remarkably good haunted house tale even for a master of horror like him. If you have ever felt a ghost in an old house, you will recognize the reactions his characters have. King is also getting better as a writer of romance. You can really feel for the female characters, both Noonan's dead wife and the woman in the custody battle.

Sadly, King is no Scott Turow or John Grisham. His views of the legal system and custody laws are bizarre. The ways the lawyers act are just laughable. But this is just a small annoyance. The legal maneuvers do make up a large of the book, but they are really just a device to move the process along and give some suspense other than what the ghosts are up to.

Overall, I recommend this book. If you want a haunted house story, you will immensely enjoy this book.

No Wonder Used Copies Sell for 3 cents

This book is Loooooong winded. There are numerous places where King goes on and one about stuff totally unrelated to anything, such as the passage where the best selling author rambles on about best seller authors and their work.Boring!!!

The story is slim. Town's people killed two people generations ago and now angry ghost is out to get revenge by killing one kid from each family. OK.

Spooky stuff encompases 10 pages out of the 300. Lame, rambling crap and King's musings on writing and the mistreatment of pop novelists take up 76 pages.

CLearly King is so big no one edits his work. Too bad. He has written some good books but this one is blah. Avoid.

Nonsense masquerading as serious writing

Contrary to the opinion of many, it seems that there are plenty of critics out there who take Stephen King seriously. He just won a distinguished contribution medal at the National Book Award ceremonies. It's really too bad that the decision was made to give him that award because he is not a serious writer. From Carrie to Bag of Bones, I have never read anything in Stephen King's writing that is remotely meaningful or profound. In this novel, King has reached an all-time low. Consider Mike Noonan's description of his outpouring of emotion over his wife's death: "I sat there in the litter of her kleenex and makeup and keys and half-finished rolls of Certs and cried with my hands over my eyes..." Or how about the chocolate-covered marshmellow candy that symbolizes her memory: "I unwrapped it (the candy) and ate it myself, sitting at the kitchen table with the contents of her red handbag spread out in front of me, and it was like taking Communion." What we see here is the usual King writing style: a senseless and random collision of details--the red handbag, the kitchen table, the reference to Holy Communion--that may or may not have any bearing on the novel's story or theme. King is better when he sticks to his earlier subjects, for which his hodgpodge style is more appropriate: killer dolls and green glows that kill tons of people but cause others artistic inspiration; a loving writer-father who decides, because ghosts who occupy a hotel that he is overseeing tell him to, to kill his entire family; walking topiaries; cars that have cognitive powers; "****-weasels," "pissants" and smerfs. THis is all well and good--amusing material for people who do not want to think about what they are reading. The problem, of course, begins when critics start suggesting--and Stephen King himself starts thinking--that he is a serious writer. After all, he compared himself to Dickens in the preface to the Green Mile, and isn't one of his novels titled after a certain famous T.S. Eliot poem? Indeed, a certain critic has suggested that the "spirits of Herman Melville and Ray Bradbury" are "deeply felt" in Bag of Bones.
Now THAT is what I call terrifying.