Jessica

I did a lot of crying while reading this book. The window into the loneliness of damaged souls.

“Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she's aware of this now, while it's happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.”

There was a time (a thousand years ago) when I could claim to have read everything that Stephen King had written. Generally, horror is not my genre, but his writing is so clear and easy and even though the stories are sometime monstrously long, you never seem to get bored. As a writer, King does not ever waste your time. Fairy Tale is no exception. You forget (if you ever knew) just how fine a line there is between horror and fairytales. Fairy Tale will remind you. A nice follow up to Starling House. 4.5 stars really. Definitely a very satisfying read. If you don't read King because you think of him as only horror, but you do love modern fairy tales, this book was written for you.

Wow. 6 stars.

Chomped through that like a stone eater. Very stressed about the imminent conflict. On to #3.

Like pretty much all general non-fiction books, I just feel it could have been shorter. I wish non-fiction wasn't afraid of being 100 great pages rather than 300 mediocre ones.

It is also very, very much a product of its publication date. COVID and racial tension in the US form the framework for understanding the myth of closure, whereas I would argue that just a few years later, the wholesale destruction of the American experiment and climate grief would be better frameworks today.

All that said, this has a lot to say about grief and I think it is a valuable read for pretty much anyone. The sister book here is absolutely Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. They are almost two sides of the same coin.