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Rating: Have you changed your underwear since King's last book? If you haven't, wait.
Take a trip to Castle Rock and follow the fascinating adventure of Gwendy.
Gwendy is an overweight teenager. Her nickname, in the last year of elementary school, is Goodyear.
She decides, on her own initiative, to jog up the suicide stairs. A steep climb that heavily engages her every morning. During this, for her cyclopean endeavor, she meets, sitting on the playground bench, an elegant man with a narrow-brimmed fedora. Mr. Farris.
Invited to sit beside him, though hesitant, she accepts.
Farris confides in the girl that he has been following her for quite some time. He has identified in her the right girl. The girl who can safeguard the button box.
The wooden box has buttons of different colors, one for each continent. And two important and different buttons from the others: one red and the other black. On the edge of the box, there is a lever, which, when operated with the thumb, daily dispenses a sweet chocolate that curbs hunger and provides vital energy. Besides the very tasty chocolate, a silver dollar of high numismatic value can also come out.
Gwendy doesn't understand the utility of the buttons, but Mr. Farris explains to her that pressing them can cause actions on the selected continent.
What kind of actions? Gwendy has a thousand questions to ask, but the stranger vanishes, leaving the hat fluttering on the suicide stairs.
Gwendy secretly keeps the box. She starts eating the tiny chocolates and collecting the silver coins. Her life changes. Everything takes a better path, from family to friends, from weight to school grades.
One evening, overwhelmed by anxiety, she presses the button with the color of South America.
The next morning, on November 18, 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana, a mass suicide occurs. Pastor Jim Jones, founder of the People's Temple, convinces his community to drink grape juice poisoned with cyanide from a large metal vat. The children are poisoned by the mothers, and the adults are urged to die with honor. Jim Jones declares "revolutionary suicide" and dies by shooting himself in the temple.
Here I stop. For the curious, Wikipedia reveals the ending.
A very intense short novel. Surprisingly, the ending is beautiful. King has accustomed us to hallucinating endings, sometimes stupid, other times useless appendices to masterpieces.
Happy Reading
Ps: Bought in a rest stop. 9.90 euros for 2 books. Online it costs too much.
Ps2: Novel written with Richard Chizmar whom I don't know and don't even care.
Ps3: Chizmar wrote the sequel, Gwendy's Magic Feather. The reviews say it sucks, and I believe it.
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