For fans of King already, you’ll love this one. For browsers, try this one out: it’s a thrill ride that fascinates. I highly recommend ’’The Dark Half’’ as an interesting read.
The cover of the Stephen King paperback entitled THE DARK HALF I just finished reading has a picture of two black sparrows, beak to beak. The eyes of the sparrows though are dark brown human eyes. The way the birds come together on the cover appears to also form the face of a man cut into two halves. I figured birds would figure in somehow. They do of course. But the interesting thing is that when I first saw the title THE DARK HALF it seemed obvious to me that this King book would be about a split personality of some sort. It turns out that in part, yes, this story does involve main character, Thad’s, other half. Only the title THE DARK HALF actually eludes to much more also, and King, as usual, did not disappoint me in revealing so many other aspects to a situation than first meets the eye.
As King is often wont to do, in THE DARK HALF, he has created a main character who is a writer. I have come across other books, such as Bag of Bones, in which I really got a strong sense that King was revealing interesting parts of himself through the characters he had created. He does so beautifully in this work. For a big King fan, this is quite the thrill. It is not that common for a writer to reveal so much about himself personally within a novel. I have read countless books wherein the authors have not so much as revealed a hint about who they are. I find King’s particular writings fascinating none so more as when he gives his ’’constant readers’’ glimpses into his mind and heart. I feel this is one of the reasons he has such a huge fan base. It certainly turned me into one of his admirers.
Here is a quote to better illustrate my point:
’’Thad closed the eyes God had put in his face and opened the one God had put in his mind, the eye which persisted in seeing even the things he didn’t want to look at. When people who had read his books met him for the first time, they were invariably disappointed. This was something they tried to hide from him and could not. He bore them no grudge, because he understood how they felt...at least a little bit. If they liked his work (and some professed even to love it), they thought of him beforehand as a guy who was first cousin to God. Instead of a God they saw a guy who stood six-feet-one, wore spectacles, was beginning to lose his hair, and had a habit of tripping over things. They saw a man whose scalp was rather flaky and whose nose had two holes in it, just like their own.
What they could not see was that third eye inside his head. That eye, glowing in the dark half of him, the side which was in constant shade...that was like a God, and he was glad they could not see it. If they could, he thought many of them would try to steal it. Yes, even if it meant gouging it right out of his flesh with a dull knife.’’
How can I not realize there is at least some autobiographical subtext going in there? I cannot. And this is the best thing about THE DARK HALF. You get lots of insight into the mind of King, the writer.
Thad Beaumont has become somewhat a success as a novelist. He has become a big hit, however, writing under a pseudonym, George Stark. The books he has written under Stark’s pen name are action-packed works of fiction that have lots of violent passages and they are much more widely read than the stories Thad has created under his own name. Then something very odd happens. Policemen show up at his door and accuse him of a murder. Come to find out, Thad’s fingerprints and his blood type are found all over the crime scene. At first you think he may be guilty. But he has an inpenetrable alibi and then the police and I are confused.
As the novel progresses we, along with Thad, learn that the real killer out there has sprung from his own mind, literally. It’s a very rare case of intrauterine fratricide. Seems when a young Thad had had an operation to remove a mass in his brain, the doctor discovered that Thad had gobbled up his twin. And somehow parts of him remained in his brain, and that’s why Thad as a youth was experiencing migraines. Yes, it’s pretty weird.
When Thad was experiencing his rare case of brain tumor, the migraines were accompanied by the sound of sparrows. Thousands of tweets. Apparently brain tumor patients usually hear or smell things that aren’t really there. Fast forward to the present and Thad has just begun hearing the sparrows again, at the same time that he figures out his evil twin is on a murderous rage leaving Thad’s own unique set of fingerprints.
This is the premise and the book just flows along without interruption. I found it impossible to put down, and devoured it myself in three sittings. Some of the murder scenes are pretty horrific and stomach churning. But I think King did a wonderful job of describing every minute detail of the murders while somehow not going overboard. I think any King fan will really enjoy this book. And for those who have not read King it would most likely make a very good introduction to the author. As I stated previously, the book is a very quick read and the action is mostly nonstop. The climax in this one is a great pay-off that does not frustrate. The ending is well worth the dark journey.