Book Review: The Dead Zone (Stephen King)

On occasion, people pass through history with extraordinary gifts that can't be explained. Maybe they're prophets. Maybe they're psychics. Maybe they're frauds. In the tragic events of Stephen King's The Dead Zone, a man named Johnny Smith becomes all of these figures rolled up into one nuanced package.

Spanning decades of the man's life, the novel chronicles an accident Smith endures in his youth, which permanently damages part of his brain. After a huge four-year coma, Smith finds out that the "dead zone" in his head gives him the uncanny ability to know things and see events by merely touching somebody. Several episodes bring out the best and worst of his abilities--he manages to save people and track down an elusive serial killer, but people are frightened by his gifts and he becomes shunned, and sometimes vilified. Inevitably, Smith's purpose is revealed when he discovers that a particularly vile politician will someday take office and bring about nuclear annihilation--what's an average man with psychic gifts to do?

Having seen the 1983 film adaptation, I knew that The Dead Zone was a good story worth telling. What I didn't realize about the original novel, however, is that the thrills and scares are sidelined by what is basically a sprawling melodrama--gothic perhaps, but still rather light on the macabre details that King usually slathers on his horror fare. I suppose it's simply the case that this story didn't warrant a whole lot of blood and guts, but it does lay bare King's sentimental style. Just as it was with The Green Mile, The Dead Zone is more interested in detailing normal people facing unusual circumstances.

In this respect, The Dead Zone is a strong story thanks to its focus on the characters. Smith is a good, down-to-Earth character we can't help but to love and root for. He's given enough plenty of introspection and enough of a voice to make his care about all he endures. I wouldn't say that he's a character that changes or evolves much over time, but part of the charm is in reading how he confronts his challenges and withstands them by simply being the "same ol' Johnny." In a way, this can be seen as inspirational.

What really brings this reading experience down for me is the same kind of indulgent prose King shows in other books--sometimes he's just too damn wordy. With The Dead Zone specifically, I was flabbergasted (and ultimately bored) by the first hundred or so pages, where Smith is absent completely because of his coma. Instead of zipping the story along to more interesting events, King filled all these pages up with other characters' mundane lives (primarily Smith's girlfriend, who couldn't really spend her life waiting and decided to move on, and his mother, who becomes a religious nut). I suppose it was King's intention to make you feel the passage of time and witness how these side characters change over time. But for one hundred or so pages? In all the space it takes for this book to get over its first act, you could squeeze in all of The Mist. I saw little reason why these scenes couldn't have been cut, at least a bit, because this is nearly a quarter of the book where the plot flatlines and nothing actually happens.

Afterwards, I found the story much more engaging when Smith woke up and his gifts manifested. This was where the meat of the story really was, and I found it far more interesting to read about Smith's adjustment to the world, rather than reading about the world passing him by. The book meanders through some random episodes--I was rather surprised (and perhaps a bit disappointed) that Smith's hunt for a serial killer took up such a short portion of the book (and it was wrapped up with very little punch). Scenes in which Smith addresses (or confronts) the media were quite enthralling. Naturally, it's the finale--Smith vs Stillson--that bears the most tension. The climax and denouement are quite solid, even if it doesn't go the way one thinks it will.

Even though I feel like huge parts of this book are padded, it is all written in a style that's quite palatable. It's a pretty easy read thanks to the way King keeps the voices grounded and relatable--there is personality galore in this book, both light and dark. Wording and sentence structures are as much of a joy to behold as ever. However, there is a slapdash approach to the POV use--other characters steal the spotlight for large chunks, and some passages are written in the form of letters and interviews. I rather wonder how this book would have read if it was solely Smith's POV and nobody else's (it would have made the first half a heck of a lot snappier).

There is a level of sentimentality to The Dead Zone that borderlines on sappiness, but it's hard to admonish it when the characters are so likable and well-drawn. They go through many tense and interesting episodes, including a whopper of a finale--I just wish the first hundred or so pages weren't so droll, and I think more opportunities could have been taken regarding certain subplots--most especially regarding the manhunt for the serial killer. That particular part of the story shows a greater weakness, in which little was set up or foreshadowed, and more had to be given to the reader as exposition. This isn't quite the case with other plotlines, so it makes the story rather uneven in its approach.

I believe that the plotting could have been improved through tightening and tying certain things up more. Don't get me wrong though--it's a good book and all. It's just a question of sitting through a very slow start and quite a bit of wordy introspection. After that, it picks up and speeds ahead towards a somber conclusion. As I suspected, it's a good story worth reading.

7/10