This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

I had a great time with this book. After refusing to read Stephen King for most of my life, I have a lot of catching up to do now that I realize I actually love his writing. I decided to pick up Joyland while I had some time off work for the holidays and found it to be a very entertaining way to spend a few hours. I am really starting to understand why Stephen King is such a popular author.

This story takes place in 1973 and is largely set at a small amusement park called Joyland. We get to spend the summer with 21-year-old Devin as he works at Joyland for the summer. Devin has a broken heart after being dumped by his college girlfriend but throws himself into his new job with gusto. I love that we get so see so many aspects of the park since Devin seems to work just about everywhere.

The characters in this book were fantastic. I loved getting to know Devin and I really felt like I knew him by the end of the book. The storytelling style of this book is as if Devin were telling us a story years after these events and at times he would meander and jump ahead a bit. I thought that this style really made the story feel authentic and added a lot of charm to the story. Devin's friends at the park, his co-workers, and a little boy and his mom all had important roles to play in this story and I felt like King did a remarkable job of bringing each of them to life.

The story was a little slow to get moving with the first half of the book more focused on character development. The pace did pick up during the second half of the book and I was really interested in learning how the girl at been murdered in the park years earlier. I thought I had the mystery solved only to learn that I was way off base. I also thought that Devin and Mike's relationship added a lot to the story. There were a lot of different elements that came together in this shorter work to tell a really amazing story.

I would recommend this book to others. I thought that this was a very well-told story with great characters, an interesting mystery, and just a touch of paranormal. I can't wait to continue working on Stephen King's amazing backlist.

Initial Thoughts
I am so glad that I finally got around to reading this one. I really enjoyed the style of storytelling in this story. Things were slow going at times but always enjoyable. I had no idea who the bad guy was going to be until the big reveal. I thought that the characters were very well done and I loved the atmosphere of the story.

Book source: Purchased

Joining the Halloween Bing pre-party a bit on the late side, but having a blast with all the traffic on my feed. Now, let's see:

Mystery or Horror?: Horror all the way

Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies or Other?: I'm partial to Witches, though the hodgepodges where everything simmers on the same pot are mighty fun.

Favourite Ghostly Tales:

The Everlost Series by Neal Shusterman and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. They are all written for that nebulous gap between children books and adult, and they are the that perfect balance of cruel and kind that often becomes emotional.

Favourites from Halloween Bingos Past:

Lol! This might get long.

It took me 1 page to realize I had a new favourite author with Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter. Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire #1) amply jumped my expectation's bar. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt surprised me by how engrossed I got into a book where there is not exactly something like a plot.

The year before last, I was happy to find that Murder on the Orient Express and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie are as good as promised. And horrified by how excellent and still current The Crucible by Arthur Miller is. I was also surprised by The Haunting of Hill House, after what I felt was a lackluster experience with Shirley Jackson's We've Always Lived in the Castle, and so very glad that I took the game's reviews to heart. Joyland by Stephen King ended up being a campy and perfectly nostalgic read. I also read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, that while polarizing, is still my favourite of hers (well, maybe fighting for top with Four Ways to Forgiveness)

Favourite Series with Supernatural Elements:

Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews. Takes a couple of books to find some polish, but they are immensely entertaining. On a darker bent, I quite liked the Darkfever Series by Karen Marie Moning, but they are more of a problematic-elements guilty pleasure.

Favourite Seasonal Covers:

Favourite Halloween Bingo Authors:

Since I always end up picking at least one more book, Stephen King. If I search for number of entries during the game, John Wyndham and Agatha Christie too. And Illona Andrews, because I'm always up for a re-read.

"Joyland", an Amusement Park in North Carolina in 1973, sells fun to all the rubes conies who walk through its gates. In "Joyland" the novel, Stephen King sells his readers a total immersion in a time long past, in a youth long-lost and in a Carnie culture now extinct. He sells the possibility of abilities beyond the normal and most of all he sells the possibility that ordinary young people can do things that make the world better.

Part of King's power to immerse us in "Joyland" is that he doesn't just set his story in 1973 and hope to take you there. He has the story told as what the now-sixty-year-old Devin Jones remembers of the summer, forty years earlier, that changed the life of his younger self.

This looking back changes the nature of the telling. It gives us the views and experiences of Devin then and Devin now. It gifts us with both intimacy and distance. It also allows the sixty-year-old Devin to be wiser and more articulate than a young man in his twenties was likely to be, which means king can stud his prose with pleasing phrases, that enhance the text the way herbs and spice enliven food. Here's an example that says something I know to be true better than I would be able to say it and yet is still a phrase that fits neatly in the story and comes believably off the tongue of the narrator.

"When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction."

Although this book is short by Stephen King standards (283 page) it is as richly textured as any of his novels. 

The background is given by the "Carnie" world which exists as an invisible overlay on the world the visitors see. It has its own language, rituals, roles and rules and King brings them all to life the eyes of a young man hungry for something to become part of.

The plot is driven partly by a murder mystery, with Devin trying to discover who killed the pretty girl who is now thought to haunt the House of Horror ride and by a strong sense of foreboding imparted by a  the predictions of Carnie fortune teller,' who may actually have flashes of The Sight, for people Devin needs to look out for.

The emotional impact of the book comes from Devin Jones' coming of age story. We see him fall in love with Carnie life because it allows him to become someone more than he has been. When he "wears the fur" and becomes a loveable dog character, he discovers that he can make kids light up with joy, He finds that he wants to be the bringer of all good thing and this leads him to fall in love first with a dying boy he sees each day on the boardwalk and then with the boy's mother because of her love for the boy and her strength and of course, because she's hot.

As I read this book, I was so pleased with it that I wondered whether King's normal "woo-woo" topics would spoil my pleasure by force-fitting the supernatural onto a story that was already compelling. I should have had more faith. As he did with "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", King weaves the supernatural in to enhance the story, rather than letting it become the story. He makes The Sight and ghosts feel as real as the rides in Amusement Park.

King avoids clichéed romance and tacky nostalgia by being deeply truthful. He also fits every emotional button available with merciless skill, leaving his readers feeling they too have been for a hell of a carnie ride.  

I listened to the audiobook version of "Joyland" which is expertly performed by Michael Kelly who manages to give just the right mix of innocence and regret to Devin Jones-

There are times when I wish that Stephen King didn't write horror.

"Joyland" hasn't had any supernatural content in it yet (unless you count a little precognition - in which case I guess "A Prayer For Owen Meaney" is horror as well - what a thought) but it is filled with whimsy, nostalgia and a well-crafted consideration of how our concept of grief or bravery or love or even common-sense change as we age. They may not get better but they change.

This would be reason enough to read the novel. 

I know there must be horror or at least spooky uncanny woo-woo stuff coming. I wonder whether it will the grated Parmesan that completes the flavour of the dish or the limp basil leaf garnish that most people leave on the plate?

I've had "Joyland" in my TBR pile for over two years now. The Creepy Carnival square on Halloween Bingo finally nudged me into reading it.

This is a short book by Stephen King standards but I like that he still takes his time settling into the story and the people. 

The story is told by a sixty-year-old man looking back on his twenty-year-old self, something that I am now able (but seldom inclined) to do. King does it with style. His prose is studded with phrases that please me in the same way that the subtle use of chilli does in food. Here's an example that says something I know to be true better than I would be able to say it and yet is still a phrase that fits neatly in the story and comes believably off the tongue of the narrator.

"When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction."