FAIRY TALE by Stephen King

FAIRY TALE

Stephen King (stephenking.com)

Illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (instagram.com) & Nicolas Delort (nicolasdelort.com)

Hodder & Stoughton (hodder.co.uk)

£22.00

Buy a copy from your favourite independent bookshop

Charlie Reade is seventeen years old when he answers a distressed bark and discovers his elderly neighbour, having fallen from a ladder and broken his leg. It’s love at first sight for Charlie when he first meets Radar, Howard Bowditch’s German shepherd, and the feeling seems mutual, and it’s partly because of the old dog that Charlie starts doing jobs for the old man, helping him to get around and running errands, some stranger than others. Bowditch is something of a recluse, but Charlie soon discovers that his gruff exterior is just that; inside is a smart, kind man who is much older than he looks and who comes to care for Charlie a great deal. When the old man dies, he leaves behind a decidedly unbelievable story: the shed at the bottom of his garden, the shed that has been locked for as long as Charlie has known him, is the doorway to another world, a world where magic still exists and where Charlie might be able to give Radar a whole new lease of life…if only he’s brave enough to open the door.

Doorways to other worlds, whether literal or figurative, are nothing new in the works of Stephen King, from the physical doors used by Roland in The Drawing of the Three, to the painting that helps Rosie Daniels escape her abusive husband in Rose Madder. With Fairy Tale, King endeavours to take young Charlie Reade – and us, Constant Reader – into the heart of Story, into a world that is the wellspring of fiction, a physical manifestation of the answer to every author’s favourite question: “where do you get your ideas?” Welcome to Empis, which may be a new and previously-unexplored area of Mid-World or may be something completely new, but is somewhere you’ve been before if you’re a reader.

Fairy Tale begins innocuously enough by introducing us to our protagonist, the young Charlie Reade, a boy who is old before his time. Charlie lost his mother at a young age and spent his formative years tending to a father who sank to the bottom of a bottle. When a direct plea to a higher power sees his father join AA and clean up his act, Charlie vows to pay it forward when the chance arises, which leads us more or less directly to his involvement with Howard Bowditch and Radar. This unlikely friendship is something else we’ve seen before in King’s works, and here we get a real sense of the relationship that develops between these two men at opposite ends of their lives. Interestingly, while King is closer in age to Bowditch, he presents Fairy Tale as a first-person narrative from the point of view of the boy almost 60 years his junior. Despite this, both characters leap from the page fully-formed and we have no problems believing that we’re in the hands of a 17-year-old boy.

In a move that harks back to ”The Mist” (the first story in King’s second collection, Skeleton Crew) Fairy Tale is split into chapters with descriptive headings, sort of like the “in which…” headings you find in older children’s stories. “The Goddam Bridge. The Miracle. The Howling.” Chapter One warns us, giving us some idea of what to expect. Chapters are capped by gorgeous black-and-white illustrations courtesy of Gabriel Rodriguez and Nicolas Delort which add to the book’s overall fairy tale feel, reminding us of books we’ve read over the years and now, perhaps, read with our children. King doesn’t rush into this brand new world, taking a full third of this enormous tome to build the real-world portion of the story, giving us plenty of time to invest in these characters and in the relationships, especially that between our young hero and his old neighbour’s dog. When the time comes to venture beyond the veil – or down the spiral staircase hidden in Bowditch’s locked shed – there is no question that Charlie will make the trip, especially when, in doing so, he can prolong Radar’s life on a magical sundial. Which, in a way, leads us to the heart of Fairy Tale, and the world that King has tried to create in Empis: this is the wellspring of all stories, a fairy tale within a fairy tale, a love letter to fiction and all the great creators who have gone before.

Near this plaza is a huge sundial that must be a hundred feet in diameter. It turns, like the carousel in the novel. The Bradbury novel. I’m sure he … never mind, mind this instead: The sundial is the secret of my longevity, and I paid a price.

As well as a possible origin for Bradbury’s magical carousel in Something Wicked This Way Comes, King also presents as with an Emerald City (not quite the emerald city we encounter in Wizard and Glass, but certainly one that springs from the same origin) and many other hints and glimpses of things that have appeared in the books that influenced King.

Empis itself reminds us most strongly of King’s own Mid-World. It’s a world where magic still exists, and where technology seems to be “running down” like an old watch. It’s a sparsely-populated place, the people having fled elsewhere in search of better lives. If we’re not in the world of Roland and his Ka-tet, we’re not too far away from it. Here Charlie meets fantastical characters who have sprung from a hundred fairy stories: beautiful princesses, talking horses, trolls and mermaids and a cruel prince determined to take it all for himself at any cost. Charlie finds himself, unsurprisingly, charged with a quest that will ultimately save Empis and the worlds beyond (including Charlie’s own). In true King style, this is not a fairy tale you’ve ever read before and in its sprawling beauty you’ll find glimpses of genius, wonder and beauty – and a whole flock of monarch butterflies – as well as plenty of Easter eggs for Constant Reader.

He leaned forward until his eyeless face was inches from mine.
‘Empis … Bella … Arabella … there are other worlds than these, Charlie.’
Indeed there were. Hadn’t I come from one of them?

Ask me for a list of my favourite books and you’ll get a different answer every time. Ask me for a list of my favourite authors and Stephen King will always be at the top. Fairy Tale is a love letter to Story, a vast and sweeping journey through King’s version of the origin of all fictional worlds. Moving from the real world to the fantastic in a single breathtaking chapter, King flexes all of his creative muscles to carry us along on the ride, and make sure we believe every step of the way. Over fifty novels in and, thankfully, showing no signs of stopping (or even slowing down!), Fairy Tale is classic King with all his trademarks firmly in place, including that easy, melodic voice that captures our attention on the first page and makes us believe right through to the last word. If books are, in his words, “a uniquely portable magic” then there is no more powerful magician than Stephen King himself. We are left wanting more: more stories of Empis and how it fits into King’s “other worlds,” and more of Charlie Reade, who we leave as his life is barely beginning. Schedule some time to relax and enjoy this latest novel from one of our greatest living novelists and allow yourself to be sucked into the fairy tale to end all fairy tales. You’ll be glad you did.