Joyland by Stephen King (Review)

Joyland isn’t ranked with Stephen King’s best work. That accolade often belongs to The Stand, IT or The Shining. Unusually it’s part of the Hard Case Crime series that wants to bring back hard boiled crime fiction of the 30s by reprinting lost classics and commissioning new one from modern authors.

With a Stephen King novel there are certain expectations. Horror, supernatural, characters from Maine and they are all present here but don’t really come to the forefront until the final act. An even then almost as an afterthought. Instead most of Joyland is spent with Devin as he works at the titular theme park over a summer trying to get over a heartbreak. All the while being told of a mysterious murder that took place in it’s House of Horrors and the ghost that subsequently haunts the place.

It’s obvious that King has done his research into theme parks and the history of carnies, perhaps too much so. He shoves it all in the book; going into minute detail into the running of a theme park, the language that carnies use, how the rides work etc, to the detriment of the plot, the solving of the murder, which is gasping for a foothold in the story and when it finally does later in the book it is almost too late. And it’s no surprise that this is where King comes into his element, with an exciting finale taking place in a storm battered Joyland.

More disturbing than the fascination with theme parks was King’s attitude towards women. They are broad archetypes and add little to the narrative past being objects for Devin to be attracted to or repulsed by. It was if he was trying to ape the pulpiness that the Hard Case Crime books are, and refer back to but it doesn’t mesh with modern sensibility. I haven’t read much Stephen King so this might be an exception rather than the rule but it left a sour taste.

Like many of Stephen King’s books Joyland attempts to mix the macabre with a coming of age tale, but in Joyland he phones it in and fails on both counts. He veers too far into telling a coming of age tale and showing off his research rather than what we want in a Stephen King novel, mystery.

Originally published at www.woodcock.xyz.