Roadwork: A Novel

Stephen King has made a name for himself as writer with a mind for the supernatural. His Constant Reader is expecting his Constant Writer to deliver just that: another novel, novella or short story as a gate for the extraordinary to slip through the customs of common sense, unnoticed, and let itself silently into our lives. Others have done it before, masters of the genre have left an impressive legacy of precedents, and it is expected others will carry further the tradition of invoking the angel of the bizarre. What all writers have in common though is their acute perception of life as an anomaly. Artists will dress up accidents disrupting our everyday existence as uncanny events ascribable to mysterious causes. I readily agree that a blood sucking creature flapping its wings through your night-time chambers is much more entertaining than another portrait of an unloving spouse. Still, the unwritten rule of the genre is that mystery may be stripped of its cloak, gown and hood and reveal itself for what it really is: a betrayal of the heart or a treason of the body. While I always ackowledged Stephen King as a first rate story teller, I always felt uncomfortable when he turned his skills towards the actual supernatural. I resented the Constant Writer for a maladroit narrative which I found to be suddenly out of step with a well crafted and promising beginning. Reading Roadwork I assumed the Constant Writer eventually grew out of his own paradox. The mature painter realised it only takes a truthful representation of life to deliver the painful shock of reality to the reader, I deducted. Roadwork shows nature going out of its way to present us with the harsher implications of leading an ordinary life. King is getting on in age, I mused. Before I discovered a green twentysomething was behind this fantastic piece of literature. I guess that's as much supernatural this Constant Reader can take. But what a briliant, insightful and well crafted piece of roadwork this is. God bless you, Bachman. You should be reclassified as a master of literature.

When I started reading this book as a Stephen King novel, I was kind of bored and disappointed; well, actually, as a Richard Bachman novel--and trust me, if you're an experience Stephen King reader, then you'll know the difference between King and Bachman. In terms of taste, it would be the difference between chocolate (King) and Frank's RedHot sauce (Bachman)--and that is quite the perfect analogy in the sense that most people enjoy chocolate, but Frank's RedHot sauce . . . well, let's just say you need a required taste. Bachman--unlike King--is a bitter, unpleasant author that really has no love for his reader. That's okay, because it is sort of an act. In The Long Walk, it was about a bunch of kids being killed by a big brother society, in which if they stopped walking or went below a certain speed, they would be shot dead. What is enjoyable about that?

And likewise, with Roadwork, what's enjoyable about a man named Burt that lost his job, his wife, his home, and ultimately his sanity and his will to live. Roadwork is essentially the journey of his unraveling. Really, the story isn't that sophisticated. But please--for Pete's sake--don't expect paranormal activity around every corner, because Bachman is not the same person as King (they are physically, but not in their literature). Bachman, in a way, is like Eli Roth (the director who made Cabin Fever and Hostel Part I and II), in the sense that it's all about the displeasure of the character and the audience.

If you compare this to The Long Walk, you'll still be kind of disappointed by the slowness of this novel. But, remember, by default The Long Walk's premise promises more "action." If Roadwork had lots of action, it would be there just for the sake of it. And King is usually good at knowing when to pick up the pace (or should I say Bachman?).

If you read this novel and keep AMC's Breaking Bad in the back of your mind, I think you'll enjoy this book a lot. Even the premise is similar to Breaking Bad. If I were to have given this novel a score the first hundred pages in, I would have given it a 3/5. But, at the halfway point, I started to understand the style and the tone, and that's what makes this book so endearing. I highly recommend it to a patient reader or a Breaking Bad fan.

And remember, when Stephen King wrote Roadwork, he never intended on people knowing it was really him; with that being said, it's the furthest thing from a King novel. It's complete freedom for an author to do what they want, without restraints.

Ya just never know what that final straw will be that sends people over the edge. For Bart Dawes, it started with the son he and his wife both loved. Their life together was just a monotonous routine and would have continued that way if the 784 hadn't been started. I wasn't sure about whether this would be an interesting read. However, Mr. King never disappoints.

It's not quite right to attribute this book to Stephen King, because it is clearly written by Richard Bachmann. More than a pen-name, it's a pseudo-persona of King's that comes across as a wholly different writer. Every time I read a Bachmann book, I find myself lingering over the details, disturbed in a way that I can't quite describe. King's books, while often unsettling, never leave me with the same feeling. Bachmann's book feel somewhat more real, based as they are on a 'truer' sense of reality? I don't know. All I can tell you is that reading this book kept me awake for days. If you can allow yourself to be submerged into this story, totally absorbed, its details will envelope you to the point that you will be able to envision the book's world as if you were standing in it yourself. Bachmann (King) is a master of description; there is almost little to nothing left to chance. Perhaps this is the most unnerving thing, because the characters are not only life-like, but possible. The story reads like a vignette, a slice of life. It will satisfy anyone's most private, inner voyeur.

I only rated it four stars because I felt a distinct switch over to King at the end of the story. I could almost feel Bachmann dissolving into the ether for the sake of the ending. Perhaps even King couldn't bring himself to let the character devolve into the natural and expected denouement. Sometimes, we just can't let go of the hope that good lingers inside each of us no matter how desperate our situations become.

I keep looking for more and more King novels, and this one was not the best. The writing was pretty good, but the story is so slow and uninteresting. I wanted more to happen; there was one chapter (or 2) in the "middle" that was VERY exciting, and the ending had me cheering and laughing and going, "Finally!" But the in-between shtuff was so ho-hum I almost gave up on it.

Having read (and loved) Stephen King's 'On Writing,' and been introduced to his prolific work ethic, I feel like this one started as a great idea -- Who hasn't been annoyed with some form of progress? -- that was shelved for a while, then revisited just so it would not be left unfinished. I'm not saying that's what happened. It just has that feel to it, for me.

I have always enjoyed Mr. King's work. And yes, I'm a big fan of "the early stuff." But I know he is a great writer, period. He's much more than a horror author. I loved the stories in 'Different Seasons.' No monsters or vampires or telepathy. Just stories that touched most of us in some way, both as written fiction and on the big screen. (Remember Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, and Apt Pupil?) These dealt with intense human events faced by the main characters.

Likewise, 'Roadwork' gives us a man up against a universal life-changing complication -- progress. A new road will knock out the place he works and -- worse yet -- his home. Most of us have felt the same kind of frustration on some level, in some aspect of our lives. Bart Dawes is up against it, and he's not taking it well. He has a breakdown, and decides he'll show his tormentors what's what!

Now, in Mr. King's hands you would think this would be a dark-but-entertaining tumble into one man's madness. It just didn't work that way for me. There was action; I'm not lamenting a lack of thrills. But there seemed to me to be a lot of unnecessary introspection in between, which wasn't helped by the abundance of words wasted on minor actions that really just reinforced what more active passages already told us. Eliminate those scenes and you have a more lean thriller that you can't put down.

That said, I think this would have worked better as a novella, or even a very meaty short story. It would have had more impact. But 'Roadwork' is still worthwhile, especially for hardcore King fans who might have missed it. But don't take this one as indicative of the Master's immense talent.

Barton George Dawes has sunk deep roots. He's worked at the same commercial laundry plant for 20 years, and lived in the same house for nearly as long. But the city has plans to extend a highway that will force the destruction of both places. Dawes has apparently been losing his grip on sanity for the past three years when his young son died of brain cancer. George buys a high-powered rifle as well as a .44 magnum handgun. He manipulates things at work so that the company ends up with nowhere to relocate to when the plant is demolished and gets fired. He starts thinking about buying explosives to destroy the highway and the equipment used to build it. I'm not going to give away any more of the plot, but when a story begins with a man purchasing guns while having two separate voices holding an argument in his head, you might guess that it doesn't end with him sipping Mai Tais on the patio of a beachfront condo in Florida.

Roadwork may be narrated in the third person, but the perspective is solely from Dawes. Readers must endure his rambling rants about virtually every aspect of life and soliloquies covering all manner of topics. If Dawes were eloquent or funny, this might be entertaining. But he's a confused, lonely, hurt man who doesn't understand why he is doing what he's doing and offers no real insight on anything. The only thing you learn from Dawes is that he's angry, and it didn't take 300 pages for that point to hit home. It's surprising that Stephen King, the master of creating compelling characters has managed to write a novel built around a single character that is neither likeable nor interesting.

Alienation from modern society is felt by many of us to varying degrees, and a book showing these feelings taken to the extreme has the potential to entertain and enlighten. Unfortunately, Roadwork has missed the mark badly on both counts. My suspicion is that this might have made a great novella of 100 pages or so but there are too many scenes of Dawes yelling at people and then saying "I don't know" when they ask him what's wrong or what he wants to do. There's no sense of tension building as his march to the inevitable occurs, just one more day of confusion and despair in what feels like an endless series of them.

Roadwork has a few strong moments such as the last ten pages. But this is not a book that could remotely be described as a page-turner or compelling. King wrote some great novels at this point in his career, but he missed the mark with this one. I wouldn't recommend it to most readers. King fans will do better to look at almost any of his other books before trying this one. Perhaps people who loved the movie