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HEARTS IN ATLANTIS is the third offering Stephen King has bestowed upon his Constant
Readers in 1999. Like his two previous novels, this one is a bit...different. STORM OF THE
CENTURY was a screenplay in book form. THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON was a fairly
straight-ahead little drama about a girl lost in the woods, and though lacking
supernatural elements, was in some ways the most terrifying book King has ever written.
And now we have HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, where King redraws the boundaries and limits between
the kingdom of the novel and the city of the short story.
Not a novel, yet not just a collection of stories, HEARTS IN ATLANTIS consists of one
novel ("Low Men In Yellow Coats") one short novel ("Hearts In
Atlantis") and three short stories ("Blind Willie," "Why We're In
Vietnam," and "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling"), spanning the four
decades between 1960 and 1999. The offerings herein are linked by time (particularly the
tumultuous events of the national nightmare known as the '60s), events and characters; the
reader accordingly should not succumb to the temptation to read HEARTS IN ATLANTIS as a
collection of stories but should instead read it as presented.
As for what is presented, well, King begins with some of his finest writing thus far in
"Low Men In Yellow Coats." This could have been subtitled "The Dark Tower
4.1" and certainly further solidifies the link between that world and our own. Those
familiar with King's Dark Tower mythos will delight in picking out references to what has
gone before and divining what is to come; those unfamiliar with Roland the Gunslinger will
be puzzled with some of the references but will otherwise be entranced by the story of the
friendship of Bobby, Carol and Sully-John, three 11-on-the-verge-of-12-year-olds in 1960
suburban Connecticut. Their on-the-surface orderly lives are dramatically changed by the
appearance of Ted Brautigan, an elderly, faintly mysterious gentleman who takes the
apartment above the one Bobby shares with his widowed mother. Brautigan brings trouble
with him --- the Low Men are after him, don't you know --- but he brings gifts as well.
Gifts which will influence the three children for good and for ill, for years to come.
"Hearts In Atlantis," the second of the five stories, occurs almost entirely in
the lounge of a college dormitory. Though the story takes place only six years after
"Low Men In Yellow Coats," the country has changed dramatically. And shows signs
of changing further still. The country is at war in Vietnam, and wars need bodies. Male
bodies, specifically. Since college students were deferred from the draft at that time it
behooved young men to stay in college lest they find themselves on the way to Saigon. This
state of affairs is well known to all concerned. Why, then, are the inhabitants of a
particular male dormitory using their free time, and in some cases their class time, to
play...Hearts? This is a particularly uneasy story. There are no supernatural overtures
here, but they may well swim beneath the surface. There is also a temptation to classify
this as a Dark Tower story as well, but that is an argument best left for the gatherings,
bulletin boards and conventions.
Then we come to the story titled "Blind Willie." It is 1983. Vietnam is a
memory, a phantom pain indelibly scarred on the national psyche. And that psyche can be
tweaked. Repeatedly. Bill Shearman/Willie Shearman/Blind Willie, a Vietnam veteran and war
hero, tweaks it every day. And not honorably. But very successfully nonetheless. This
story, though well done and more than capable of standing on its own, had the feel of
being half-finished, or of being a work in progress. It would not be surprising to see it
enlarged, standing as a novel on its own at some point, so that we can see if Blind Willie
ever resolves his dilemma with Officer Wheelock, and if he is ever found out, and if maybe
the whole scam didn't hatch with Mrs. Shearman.
The circle that started with "Low Men In Yellow Coats" closes with "Why
We're In Vietnam" and "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," in which
Bobby, Carol, and Sully-John, separated from each other --- and their childhoods --- in
1960 are reunited, in a way, in 1999. And Ted Brautigan puts in a surprise appearance
here, as well.
HEARTS IN ATLANTIS is going to be picked over, analyzed, discussed, written about and,
most importantly, enjoyed by King's legions of fans and critics. Readers of THE DARK TOWER
series will be particularly pleased, and confounded, by what is presented here.
Ultimately, however, this will be an important book for anyone who experienced the 1960s,
a decade whose events, haunt us --- as they did Bobby, Carol and Sully-John --- to this
very day.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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