29 September 2019

Books: The Institute By Stephen King (2019)


"In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.” In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extra normal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute"

Like all King’s books, The Institute is a battle between good and evil. But while the book owes a lot to King’s past works –Firestarter and Carrie comes to mind, but a few others as well - and the huge success of Stranger Things, he does give us a novel that is still unexpectedly different, if only because it starts off one way and then goes another way. We start with a troubled ex-cop from Sarasota, who’s on his way north and whose stopover in a small backwater town becomes more permanent. And in typical King fashion, while the town of DuPray does not exist in a vacuum (it’s modern and even has a black sheriff), it still carries the DNA of other small towns King has introduced to us Constant Reader –a place where everyone knows everyone’s business. Then it shifts to a story about Luke and events of The Institutes. It’s here where the bulk of the book takes place. As I read, I was curious how Tim Jamieson and Luke will intersect.

As usual, just as well, we get character development –something King has always excelled in. We get a lot of backstory most the characters, including the bad folks as well (who are not evil –though they are- but more people who do bad things in pursuant of a goal). We’ve also seen King use the special child trope before (see above) and Luke is no Danny Torrance or Carrie White, because his “powers” seem more about his ability to puzzle out problems than read people’s minds or move objects (though he can do that, but he needs the abilities of the other kids to enhance that). So Luke is written as a 12-year-old genius and seems more adult than the adults, but he still has believable, well written pre-teenager who has a lot issues. The fact that he can still function, still plan, is still more a plot device, but King works in magic here.

It’s a big book, dark with ideas, more science fiction (or magical realism) than horror, but still a well paced tale.

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