Roadwork: A NovelAudiobook

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.

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.

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.