Skip to main content

Bag of Bones Book Review

 

-Matthew McConkey

This book is a great read. Plain and simple. This was King’s first book with Scribner, and what a novel to lead off with. This book has everything: love, loss, redemption, a ghost story, and a murder mystery, all in one. 


When I first read this book, I was young. I was 19 a few months before I turned 20. I didn’t know anything about a midlife crisis and certainly didn’t know about losing a spouse. And when I first read the book, I didn’t get it because of my age and inexperience. 

As with most of King’s work, especially now that I'm older and more mature, I’m connecting with it on a higher level. And Bag of Bones is one of those books I connected with emotionally. Not only did I connect with Mike, the story's protagonist, but I also empathized with him.

Stephen King, to me, puts on a writing clinic, fusing a great story with a fully realized arc that never tires. His use of ghosts, love gained and lost, and a long-ago murder mystery make this book a must-read.

Bag of Bones works because Mike Noonan is such a likable character. His life has been shattered by his wife’s death, which has affected not only his mental and physical state but also his career. You just root for this poor guy as he tries to put his life back together. And you really hope Mike ends up happy again. Mike is one of the good guys in King’s work. One of my favorite main characters.

Bag of Bones works because it’s a great ghost story. That gets lost in this book, I think, because of the stuff going on with Mattie and her estranged father-in-law, the evil and decrepit Max Devore. When the story turns back to the actual haunting in Sara Laughs, Mike uncovers exactly why the place is haunted and who is doing it.

Bag of Bones works because of the authentic relationship that Mike forges with Mattie and Kyra. This relationship comes across on the pages as real, even though Mike tries not to think of Mattie in the ways he thinks about her. He has a boyish crush on her, but reminds himself of the age difference. I think the dynamic between Mike and Mattie was truly authentic, as King intended. All of that felt real to me and came alive on the pages.

Bag of Bones works because, at its core, it’s a love story of sorts. Mike loved his wife profoundly. And for several years, he couldn’t get over her untimely death. I don’t really think he ever got over Jo’s death at all. It was really a cool idea to have Jo’s ghost be at Sara Laughs with Mike helping him solve the mystery of Sara Tidwell’s death. It was good for Mike to have that connection with Jo, even if it was from beyond the grave.

Bag of Bones works because it plays into three different themes: A love story, a murder mystery, and a ghost story. It seems like a lot is going on, but King managed to weave in and out of each theme seamlessly without confusing the reader. Not many writers can do this kind of magic. But Stephen King has been doing it for years

Bag of Bones rattled my bones at 4/5


Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Is There An Age Requirement To Read Stephen King?

  -Matthew McConkey  One October night, I was with a friend and his daughter around my outdoor fireplace, discussing a multitude of subjects: Sports, TV shows, movies, and then books and authors came up. One author, in particular, was Stephen King .   My friend’s daughter knew that I was a student and Constant Reader of his. At seventeen, she was very curious about his books and stories and had even read some of his work. A few of the books she read, she didn’t fully understand, and put them down a quarter of the way through.  She told me that they were too "adult" for her. From there, she asked what I thought his best books were, scariest, and so forth, and what I would recommend from him. Most of all, she wanted to know why he was so difficult to read. I answered all those questions honestly. But then I got into this tangent about her last question on why King was so hard to read. I went into this notion of how old you really ought to be when you read Stephe...
Read more

Book Review: Billy Summers

  By Matthew McConkey I’ve got to say something here: This is one of King’s best stories that isn’t predicated on the supernatural. Usually, King is really good in this sandbox, writing a straight drama. And that’s pretty much what Billy Summers is.   I didn’t read it when it was released in 2021. I bought it and put it on my bookshelf because I had a backlog of books at the time. Around Thanksgiving of 2024, I was finally able to get this book down from the shelf and read it. It was a little slow getting it going, King’s fault, not mine, but that is typical Stephen King in most cases. As a Constant Reader, we know that the storyteller is eventually going to get us to the story. His tried-and-true recipe applies here.  The novel has a fairly straightforward plot: a hitman is hired to eliminate someone. What’s different about this job is that it’s going to be Billy’s final hit. However, we all know nothing is that simple in the world of Stephen King.  When I fin...
Read more

Novella Review: The Answer Man

-Matthew McConkey “My nephew, Jon Leonard, dug around in my old stuff, a lot of it unfinished and long forgotten. He made a photocopy of one particular six-page fragment with a note attached, saying it was too good not to finish. I read it and thought he was right. Those first pages were written when I was thirty. I finished it when I was seventy-five.”- SK The Answer Man is a novella that was unpublished until King decided to include it in 2024’s You Like It Darker. It’s a supernatural-esque tale that doesn’t go overboard on the unseen. King does a great job of making this story feel like it could happen in the real world. When I was reading it, I swear it felt like a story from The Twilight Zone .  The story centers on Phil Parker, a young lawyer in Depression‑era New England, who chances upon a curious roadside booth. A man—the “Answer Man”—offers to reveal Phil’s future for a modest fee. As Phil returns over the decades, each insight seems to guide him toward success, love, and...
Read more