That day had gotten off to a memorably shitty start. The house still smelled faintly of smoke even though I’d sprayed around the Glade. Dad had decided to make omelets for breakfast. God knows why he was up at six AM, or why he decided I needed an omelet, but he wandered away to use the bathroom or turn on the TV and forgot about what was on the stove. Still half-loaded from the night before, no doubt. I woke up to the bray of the smoke detector, ran into the kitchen in my underwear, and found smoke billowing up in a cloud. The thing in the frypan looked like a charred log. but you need to help yourself. You need to work. You need to score high on the SATs when you take them.” Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world.

I’ve gone on too long, sorry for the ramble. I could continue, I love King (most anyway). I’ll end by saying for me this is a solid five stars and goes up there alongside my favorites of his which is saying mouthful.There are some passing contemplations in the tale that rise above the simple experience of the plot. In one, Charlie wonders whether it is Empis that is the magical place or the world he was born into, offering some intriguing examples of why one might think that. There are more. Charlie Reade, a quien conoceremos desde los siete años. Un niño que perdió a su madre y durante un tiempo, también a su padre. No es un personaje en blanco y negro. A los diecisiete es responsable, comprometido y empático. Capaz de cuidar de un anciano impedido y de su perra envejecida, movido por un compromiso que adquirió consigo mismo. No siempre fue así. En el pasado los problemas paternos le llevaron a cometer acciones de las que no se siente orgulloso. We were never a churchgoing family, or religious at all in any conventional sense. Once I asked my mom why we didn’t go to church—was it because she didn’t believe in God? She told me that she did, but she didn’t need a minister (or a priest, or a rabbi) to tell her how to believe in Him. She said she only needed to open her eyes and look around to do that. Dad said he was brought up a Baptist but quit going when his church got more interested in politics than the Sermon on the Mount.

If you’ve come on Goodreads in the last 3 weeks, you’ve likely seen many reading this or adding it to their ever-growing TBR list. The plot is built as such: the pace is slow, the hero goes through various trials and challenges that turn him from an ordinary boy in a small town to a brave and wise prince in a foreign world. In my opinion, he did a fantastic job taking the reader on a journey that's whimsical, courageous and nail biting good! I carry a picture of us in my wallet. I was maybe three when it was taken. She’s got me on her hip. One of my hands is in her hair. She had beautiful hair.This is the story of Charlie Reade, having lost his mother and then, temporarily, lost his father to alcoholism. The thing is as follows: this book is so unlike his usual style, but at the same time he keeps his usual pace and his usual storytelling manner, which might give you chills down your spine from time to time. Cuando eres lector constante de un autor como Stephen King comienzas a ver sus aciertos y falencias. Descubres de qué pie cojea y sobre cuál mantiene el equilibrio. En este caso, siempre he dicho que tiene una manera de narrar muy pausada y a veces, me pasa últimamente que cuando veo que sus libros tienen más de 800 páginas me pregunto si valdrá la pena todo el viaje final. Y vaya que sí, para mí lo ha valido con creces. Es de esas veces en las que ni siquiera estuve pendiente del número de páginas que faltaban y solo quería más y más, sumergirme en el cuentazo y todos sus detalles fantásticos que me tenían maravillado. Great, just great. At this point I'll say I don't give an eff about Charlie & his Dad, but the dog better survive the novel.

Ahora, con diecisiete años, Charlie encuentra dos amigos inesperados: una perra llamada Radar y Howard Bowditch, su anciano dueño. El señor Bowditch es un ermitaño que vive en una colina enorme, en una casa enorme que tiene un cobertizo cerrado a cal y canto en el patio trasero. A veces, sonidos extraños emergen de él. La estructura y la trama. El libro está dividido en treinta y dos capítulos y un epílogo. Cada capítulo, que consta a su vez de varias partes, tiene un título con frases alusivas a cada una de ellas. Al comienzo, una ilustración igualmente alusiva. Al estilo clásico de los cuentos tradicionales. Bueno, bonito y sencillo en apariencia. Una historia que comienza en la más tranquila cotidianidad y termina en un mundo mágico con la misión noble de salvar a una perra, para terminar convirtiéndose en una aventura por la supervivencia propia y de un grupo de habitantes del Reino de Empis. Un mundo lleno de maravillas y tormentos. Y aunque es obvio que tiene algunos pequeños fallos que no me convencen por su falta de verosimilitud bien se los perdono porque precisamente esto es un cuento de hadas, y en ellos abundan las coincidencias, las rarezas, el destino, o fuerzas mayores que actúan para que pase lo que tiene que pasar. Es más, hasta el mismo protagonista hace una especie de comparación un poco acertada: «¿Pensáis que algunas de las cosas de mi relato son difíciles de creer? Pues intentad imaginaros a Paul Newman de indio. Eso sí que es llevar la credibilidad al límite.» But one night about a week before school was scheduled to start again, it came into my mind to pray. The urge was so strong it was really a compulsion. I got down on my knees beside my bed, folded my hands, squeezed my eyes shut, and prayed that my father would quit drinking. “If you do that for me, whoever you are, I’ll do something for you,” I said. “Promise and hope to die if I don’t keep it. You just show me what you want and I’ll do it. I swear.”El whisky no huele como la ginebra… y a la vez sí. A mí todo el alcohol me huele igual: a tristeza y pérdida.» A story as old as myth, and as startling and iconic as the rest of King’s work, Fairy Tale is about an ordinary guy forced into the hero’s role by circumstance. Overland’s Midwest headquarters is on the outskirts of Chicago, in what Dad called Insurance Alley. In his commuting days it was just a forty-minute drive from Sentry, an hour if the traffic was heavy. There were at least a hundred claims adjusters working out of that one office, and on a day in September of ’08 one of the agents he used to work with came to see him. Lindsey Franklin was his name. Dad called him Lindy. It was in the late afternoon, and I was at the kitchen table, doing my homework.

When he does make the shift that contrast of the two worlds is not only fascinating but goes a long way to make it real. Make it believable. Maybe I shouldn’t have been reading this in parallel with what I consider King’s best - the still amazing after a gagillion rereads It). As their friendship develops, Howard has secrets galore and knows about a portal to another world. He shares this information with Charlie and he goes on an adventure and journey that you'll just have to read about. At one point in the novel, Charlie Reade is in a course called America Today and his teacher, Mr. Masensik, asked Charlie for his opinion concerning the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. Both of those shootings occurred in 2016 and the novel is set in April 2013 to February 2014, so those shootings would not have occurred yet.

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Whenever I review a new King book, I get asked by some people whether this would be a good place to start for newcomers to King. It's usually a difficult question, but here I can answer easily: no. Fairy Tale isn't bad, but it's far from his best. I'd recommend pretty much any of his novels released in the last few years over this one ( The Outsider, The Institute, Sleeping Beauties, Billy Summers, for example.) Stephen King has written one of my favorite books of all times: IT. There is nothing like that book and those characters out there. I think he truly delivers magic when it comes to coming of age stories and he adds so much soul to mundane characters. As a dog owner, isn’t this always the case? I swear my heart grows a bit more when I’ve got a dog in my life that loves me unconditionally.