The Institute by Stephen King — An Audiobook Review
A gifted child, a forlorn former police officer, and a government shadow program with highly questionable methods and motives place this psychological thriller into the winner’s circle of fiction writing
Nothing sets an icy dagger of fear into my soul as much as kids in peril. Whether it’s a dangerous circumstance or evil at work when a child is the threatened character, my sense of calm evaporates. Stephen King focuses the plot of The Institute on that trigger, and it’s a 561-page trip into a psychological nightmare that neither the reader nor the characters in the book can escape from.
What makes King’s work so good is that his characters are so real. The people you pass every day. Kids going to school, parents going to work. Children with the same worries and faults as your own and parents who work jobs that genuinely exist. Unlike Hollywood stories where the male lead is an architect and the female lead is a writer/columnist for a NY magazine, and their kids attend private schools in relative bliss — if there’s a trope that’s been done to death, it’s that one.
How many wealthy, single, well-adjusted architects have you met? Me? Zero. How many women writers do you know…
