11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63 is a historical fiction novel written by Stephen King. It takes place between 1958 and 1963, in the five years leading up to the assassination of John F Kennedy.

             

Stephen King, who is best known for horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy, wrote the novel. He has no particular unique experience with the events, but did live through the assassination of JFK and experienced what was going on then.

           

11/22/63 is about a man named Jake Epping who lives as an English teacher in modern time, and a man he knows who owns a restaurant discovers a way to travel back to 1958. The restaurant owner decides to save John F Kennedy form being assassinated, but is stopped when he learns that he has lung cancer from smoking and can not live the 5 years to stop the assassination. The restaurant owner decides to send Jake to stop the assassination instead. Jake first goes back to see if he can save someone’s life while in the past, or whether history will cause him to stop. He decides to save the life of the brother’s and sister of a student, who is trying to get a GED. The murder takes place only a few months after he goes back and so tries to save them first. When he successfully saves them, he goes on to try and save JFK.

While in the past Jake travels to find information on Lee Oswald and stop him. He is able to have knowledge of events that, to the people of the past, is future knowledge. He can make large bets on unlikely outcomes, knowing safely that he will win. Jake learns about Lee Oswald’s life and what he is like so that he can stop the assassination. This eventually leads him to a town near Dallas where he falls in love with a woman there. Jake proceeds to try and save JFK from being assassinated by Lee Oswald.

The pace of this book was very slow and many events that were unnecessary took place. Stephen King includes many situations just to show that history is resisting change. Also for a significant portion of the book, many of the occurrences that take place are spread between long periods of nothing happening. The pace of the book only speeds up at the end of the book, but too little happens before then.

Many of the characters in 11/22/63 seem to be possible, but few are very deep. Jake has to hide his true identity, while maintaining a life in places to keep an eye on Lee Oswald. He gets more complex when he falls in love with a woman from a town near Dallas.  He has to hide his identity and purpose, while trying to live a normal life, and wanting to hide as little as possible from the woman he loves.

           

The style is one that is acceptable for the average high school student, but is too tedious for the most people to particularly want to read it. The style demonstrates what the life was like in between 1958 and 1963 but go on for too long on each subject.

           

Overall the book was decent, but there were quite a few things that could have been better. The book went on too long where it was not necessary, and was quite tedious throughout most of it. The novel takes place over five years, but the most of those five years are not important to the book. Also, the author seemed to emphasize things that happened that did not really have any particular importance. He puts a lot of emphasis on history resisting change and “harmonizing”, and the main character noticing every little event that might mean this and how it isn’t just a coincidence. An example where this is not necessary is where Lee Oswald knows two people whose first names are George.

On a five star rating scale, I would put 11/22/63 at a two. This is because the book is too tedious and long, where the events do not need to happen at this particular pace. The book could easily be reduced to half as long with all of the same content. Most of the events that take place in this novel are adequately interesting, but not nearly enough to counter the slowness. Also several of the things that happen are simply repetitions of the same events.

Genre:  Historical Fiction

Reviewed by:  Nicholas Bauer

Teacher:  Mara Pufko