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Posts : 493 Join date : 2010-01-14 Age : 33 Location : Seattle, WA
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| Subject: Bag Of Bones Sun Jan 17, 2010 4:51 am | |
| Bag of Bones is a 1998 novel by Stephen King. Its themes include the trials of the writing process (the main character, Mike Noonan, has writer's block), the power of memory (the ghosts of Noonan's past as well as the ghosts of Sara Laughs, the lakeside house to which he moves) and the ghosts lurking close behind the everyday and the mundane. A human element, however, is the struggle of a young widow and her daughter to stay away from the grip of Max Devore, the power-mad figurehead of the community. Bag of Bones won the British Fantasy Award in 1999.
After the sudden death of his wife Jo, author Mike Noonan is plagued by writer's block; with his dreams haunted by the summer house he shared with her, he reluctantly decides to return to the isolated lakeside retreat.
There he finds his once-beloved township in the grip of the powerful millionaire Max Devore, who twists this small community to his own purpose, attempting to take his young granddaughter away from her widowed young mother. As Mike is drawn into their struggle, he falls in love with both of them and is further drawn into the mystery of this ghostly, unusual town.
The narrator, Mike Noonan, is an author living in Derry, Maine who suffers from severe writer's block after the death of his wife, Johanna (called Jo), from an undiagnosed brain aneurysm. Particularly disquieting to Mike is that his wife had just bought a home pregnancy test, but never revealed the pregnancy to him. He anguishes after his wife's death and finds himself unable to write due to panic attacks; fortunately, he has four unpublished manuscripts stashed in a safe deposit box and uses them to keep his agent and editor unaware of his problem.
Four years after Jo's death, Mike begins to experience nightmares set at his summer house in TR-90, an unregistered township in Maine. He decides to confront his fears and moves to the house, known to locals as Sara Laughs. On one particular day, Mike encounters a small child, Kyra Devore, walking down the middle of the road. Mike worries that something might happen to the child if she continues walking like that, so he scoops her up and returns to his car with her. A moment later, Kyra's mother, Mattie Devore comes flying up the road in her old jeep. Mike's initial reaction is that Mattie is a "white trash" mom who will yell at the child and possibly beat it due to her own inattentions, but he is pleasantly surprised when Mattie clutches the child for dear life and begs her never to run off again. Mattie asks Mike not to say anything about this; they talk for a few minutes and Mattie drives off.
Later, while in town, Mike learns from the locals that Mattie's late husband, Lance, was the son of Max Devore, a rich and influential man from the town who didn't approve of his son's marriage to Mattie. Max, now well into his 80's and bound to a wheelchair, wants custody of his granddaughter, and is using his money and influence to paint Mattie as an irresponsible mother. Through his caretaker, Bill, Mike learns of Mattie's past, her marriage and custody woes.
When Max finds out that Mike ran into Mattie and Kyra, he threatens him via telephone. Despite the threats, or perhaps because of them, Mike hires John Storrow, a custody lawyer, for Mattie as an act of kindness, and he gradually develops feelings for Mattie, despite the almost twenty-year age difference between them. Through his various crooked connections, Max manages to drag Mike into the custody battle even further by forcing him to make a deposition for the impending custody hearing. Accompanied by a local lawyer, Romeo Bisonette, Mike makes the custody lawyer hired by Devore look foolish by beating him at his own game and calling his bluff.
Mike begins to write again, while both Kyra and Mike experience hauntings in their homes. The author realizes that the ghost of Jo is assisting him in solving the mystery of Sara Tidwell, a blues singer whose spirit is haunting Mike's house. Mike asks the locals what happened to Sara Tidwell, and is warned to refrain from digging in old scandals. He also learns that Jo frequently returned to the town in the year before her death, without telling him.
Max Devore threatens Mike again, and in an encounter with Mike, Max and his personal assistant, Rogette, almost succeed in drowning him. It's only due to the help from his wife's spirit that he's able to survive the attack. Then, in an unexpected turn of events, Max Devore commits suicide, which seemingly leaves Mattie and Kyra free from his influence.
Mike, Mattie, John, Romeo Bissonette (Mike's lawyer from his deposition) and George (a detective that helped Romeo with the trial), are having a party when two gunners make a drive-by shooting and hit nearly everyone in sight- Mattie fatally in the head, John in the ankle, Romeo in the shoulder and George in the arm and thigh. George takes out a pistol he's carrying and shoots at the car, rupturing the fuel tank, breaking the rear window, blowing out the rear tire and hitting the driver, which causes them to crash into a ditch, igniting the leaking gasoline. Mike, the only adult not hit, takes Kyra back to Sara Laughs as a huge storm breaks. He's acting under the influence of the ghost of Sara Tidwell and finds himself preparing to drown Kyra and commit suicide himself, going so far as to give Kyra cocoa and Benadryl to make her sleep, and drawing the bath. But there are still pieces to the mystery that Mike doesn't understand, and the ghost of Jo is trying to prevent him from doing what he's doing.
Jo's spirit calls Mike's attention to a novel he has begun to write. Hidden in the pages are clues that clarify some of the mysteries that have confronted him in the house. As Kyra sleeps, Mike goes to Jo's studio to search for answers. He discovers documents that Jo had hidden away before her death, among them a genealogy showing Mike's blood relationship to one of the town families. Several families had firstborn children with "K" names who had been murdered or died under suspicious circumstances. The genealogy shows that Mike and Jo's child (who was going to be named Kia) would've been the next firstborn child with a "K" name in the family line, had she been born.
Mike realizes this must be Sara Tidwell's curse for something that had been done to her. He returns to the house, checks on the still-sleeping Kyra and drains the bath meant for her drowning. He can feel Sara's influence, urging him to take Kyra to the lake, but he fights it off. He leaves the house once more with a shovel and a bottle of lye to search for Sara's grave, knowing that the only way to break the curse and keep Kyra safe is to destroy Sara's bones. On his way to where he suspects Sara is buried, the ghosts of Max Devore's grandfather and several members of the old families, attempt to thwart his progress. Mike learns in a vision that these men had viciously raped and killed Sara, and drowned her son Kito in the lake; furthermore, all the "K" children who have died were descendants of those men. Mike makes it to the gravesite, but Sara's ghost doesn't want the curse ended prematurely. She tries to stop Mike, and starts to assume corporeal form to do so. Jo appears in corporeal form herself and tells Mike he must hurry, as Sara has been taken over by an "Outsider" to harm Mike and prevent him from reaching Sara's bones. Jo struggles to fight off the Outsider while Mike digs up and destroys Sara's bones with the lye, ending the curse.
Returning to the house, Mike discovers that Max Devore's assistant Rogette has kidnapped Kyra. Mike follows Kyra and Rogette to a neighboring property, arriving just as Kyra bites Rogette and attempts to flee onto a floating dock heaving in the waves from the storm. Mike tries to hit Rogette and keep her away from Kyra when Mattie's ghost appears and knocks Rogette into the lake. Rogette tries to pull Mike in with her, but is impaled by wreckage from the dock. Mattie's ghost says her goodbyes to Mike and Kyra, tells Kyra that she's now Mike's "little guy".
The novel ends with an epilogue in which readers are told that Mike has retired from writing and is attempting to adopt Kyra. His status as a single, unrelated male complicates things, and the adoption has taken longer than Mike anticipated. Still, the state has allowed Mike to visit Kyra, and she has been allowed overnight stays with him. The outcome of the adoption is left unresolved at the end of the novel, but the reader is given hope that it will be a positive outcome. | |
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