If you'd told me there was a new book out in which a teacher has to travel back in time to try and stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the 22nd of November 1963, I would have bought it regardless of the author. From Back To The Future to Mad Men, I've long had a great affection for late 50s / early 60s Americana, and I've also always been fascinated by the way the Kennedy assassination has been absorbed into pop culture, from Oliver Stone's epic, star-studded and wildly paranoid JFK to one of my favourite Manic Street Preachers songs, I'm Just A Patsy. And it goes without saying that I'm a sucker for time travel stories too. So, like I say, I'd have bought this book whoever wrote it. But Stephen King? My favourite author in the whole world ever, ever? Could it get any better?
Well, yes, it could. Because not only is this Stephen King, but it's also the best Stephen King I've read in 20+ years. I've been more positive about King's recent works than many of his longtime fans, but I've still been aware of its flaws: self-indulgent rambling and anti-climatic conclusions being his greatest crimes of late. But at no point during 11.22.63 did I feel that King was dragging his feet: indeed, for a novel that's 734 pages long I could happily have read another 734. Unlike many novels, I wasn't racing to get to the end so I could move on to the next book on my stack, I was pacing myself, slowing down my reading, trying to relish every page, not wanting it to end. That said, I was glad when it did - and, more importantly, how it did. This was perhaps the most satisfying climax King has ever written, and it was interesting to see him tip his hat in that regard towards his son, Joe Hill, who "thought up a new and better ending".
The most impressive thing about 11.22.63 is the plot. Time travel stories are notoriously tricky to navigate, especially ones which involve changing history. Add to that the conspiracy legends that surround JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald and there were a plethora of predictable twists that could have sunk this story. That said, there are also certain time travel tropes which are essential, and to ignore them would have led to a hugely unsatisfying read. King's answer to this dilemma is two-fold: firstly to cleverly hoodwink readers who were expecting a shlocky conspiracy thriller into enjoying a far more satisfying romantic drama. To the point that once the Oswald chase finally takes centre stage, we're screaming at the author to take us back to the comforting diversions of young high school teachers in love. Secondly, there's King's ingenious solution to the book's true protagonist and antagonist. Despite what you might expect, this is not one man from the future versus history's most infamous assassin. Instead, it's one man from the future versus time itself. Time is the bad guy in 11.22.63, because time does not want to be changed. And time will do anything to stop history being meddled with. 'How does one man defeat time itself?' is the novel's central question, yet we're ever aware that a second question lurks in the background: 'What are the consequences if he does?'
The best thing I can say about 11.22.63 is that it's taken top place on my list of Stephen King novels I'd recommend to people who don't read Stephen King novels. If it's true that King has spent his entire career trying to shed the clumsy genre labelling and write that elusive "Great American Novel", then I'll be damned if he hasn't finally done it. Whether or not the sniffy critics will be able to get past the fact that this is a story in which an English teacher travels back half a century through a food pantry in a roadside diner... well, screw 'em if they don't have the imagination.
