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Rating: Stephen King is not just a writer of horror stories. Stephen King is, above all, the best living storyteller of shadow lines.
The shadow lines are those intangible but decisive passages that separate childhood from adolescence and adolescence from adulthood.
"Hearts in Atlantis", a novel in episodes from 1999, is one of the best examples of this, along with "It" and "Different Seasons".
The book tells the story of three children from the town of Harwich, Bobby Garfield, Carol Gerber, and Sully-John Sullivan, children of American suburbia and close narrative relatives of the magnificent losers of Derry. The story begins in 1960 and intertwines with the major social events of the time, particularly the Vietnam War, the hippie movement, and student protest.
Here, King puts himself completely at stake, using neither special effects nor his vast arsenal of ancestral fears. The horror is there, but it lies in the images of the young boys gone mad in the Vietnamese jungle (the "Green"), who massacre entire villages simply because at some point their minds cease to function properly. It's in the memory of an old "mamasan" killed in the Green who returns to visit you every day, without saying a word, but reminding you by her mere presence that you haven't always been a human being. The horror is in a head office that transforms into a monster worse than those from the corridors of the Overlook Hotel. In small power becoming abomination.
"Hearts in Atlantis" talks about the "lost generation", the generation of American boys who fell into the horror of Vietnam.
A generation born carefree and confident in the future, discovering rock and roll and the post-war economic boom but too soon turned into Atlantis: lost, sunk in the years "between the death of John Kennedy and that of John Lennon".
Many will end up with their guts in their hands and leeches stuck to their skin, in a jungle too far from home. Riddled with bullets in university campuses as in the mud of the Mekong delta, fighting the "damned Vietcong" or contesting the very fact of going to fight.
But there is more. "Hearts in Atlantis" talks about first love. About how the first kiss is the measure with which we evaluate all other kisses in our life, always finding them a bit less overwhelming. It talks about magic, that particular light we associate with the end of childhood. A light that, in memory, always seems more dazzling.
It talks about the end of adolescence. That moment when if we are not very careful, we end up losing "not only innocence but also hope", transforming the children we were into gray and disillusioned adults convinced that hiding feelings is the best way not to get hurt anymore. Instead, it is the worst of mistakes, though we usually only realize it when it is too late.
Finally, above all, "Hearts in Atlantis" talks about information. Those exchanged between loved ones, between friends, among schoolmates, university peers, trench comrades.
A good book is information.
A kiss is information.
Sex is information.
Music is information.
Having the courage not to lie to oneself and others is information.
Being human is about exchanging information.
Without information, everything disappears, one is left at the mercy of delirium, stupidity, abuse, of the "low men" who crush us without even truly seeing us, for a bit more money and power or, sometimes, out of pure stupidity, like the many, too many Ronnie Malenfants of this world.
In filigree, this is what Stephen King talks about in "Hearts in Atlantis", telling a heart-wrenching story of a childhood, a war, an adolescence, and a love.
He does it excellently, and for this reason, I risk, in this case, the treacherous word "masterpiece".
Because I was not only Carol Gerber for 500 pages read in one breath, but I still am, every day, and will be forever. As I was Beverly Marsh (but also Eddie with his inhaler, the fat Ben, Richie with his thousand voices) after reading "It".
When Carol in the book reads the line that ends this review, she cries for all she has lived through and lost, for all she has been and no longer is, but perhaps still is somewhere. When I read it in 2000, I cried for the same reasons.
When I reread it some time ago, after forever losing the dearest person in my life, I cried again, for different reasons. Because we exchanged a lot of information since we were children and reading these lines, I realized for the first time that it would never happen again.
PEACE+LOVE=INFORMATION
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