Loading
Bag Of Bones
Summary
Stephen King's most gripping and unforgettable novel, Bag of Bones, is a story of grief and lost love's enduring bonds, of a new love haunted by the secrets of the past, of an innocent child caught in a terrible crossfire.
Set in the Maine territory King has made mythic, Bag of Bones recounts the plight of forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan, who is unable to stop grieving even four years after the sudden death of his wife, Jo, and who can no longer hear to face the blank screen of his word processor.
Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake. Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, Mike finally returns to Sara Laughs, the Noonan's isolated summer home.
He finds his beloved Yankee town familiar on its surface, but much changed underneath -- held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, who twists the very fabric of the community to his purpose: to take his three-year-old granddaughter away from her widowed young mother. As Mike is drawn into their struggle, as he falls in love with both of them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here -- and what do they want of Mike Noonan?
As vivid and enthralling as King's most enduring works, Bag of Bones resonates with what Amy Tan calls "the witty and obsessive voice of King's powerful imagination." It's no secret that King is our most mesmerizing storyteller. In Bag of Bones -- described by Gloria Naylor as "a love story about the dark places within us all" -- he proves to be one of our most moving.
Read on the Scribd mobile app
Download the free Scribd mobile app to read anytime, anywhere.
Reviews
Having read a lot of vampire stories lately, I loved that while this book is not exactly a vampire story, it is related, a sort of ghost-vampire hybrid tale. I also was amused by the idea that maybe in this story Stephen King is drawing on his own nightmares, sharing his deepest fears to provide substance for his book, using his dread of writer's block to provide the words that keep him writing long enough to provide his readers with a new book.
Some of the scenes in this book do get pretty graphic, including a murder-rape, so this is not a good book selection for readers with 'trigger' issues in that area, but for the average thriller reader I definitely recommend this book.
Some of the scenes in this book do get pretty graphic, including a murder-rape, so this is not a good book selection for readers with 'trigger' issues in that area, but for the average thriller reader I definitely recommend this book.
The book was excellent and the movie was pretty good also. The movie was a little hard to follow with the constant switching back and forth between eras.
I know that King often gets criticism for his longer stories, his large novels, because they're so darn long. But, for me, those are some of my favorite stories and Bag of Bones is no exception.I think that this is quite possibly the creepiest full-length novel of King's that I've read so far. More than once the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and the fine hairs along my arms followed right along. I kept telling myself I'd stop reading it at night, but I never adhered to that promise. The man knows how to write a ghost story and I think even if I'd read it in broad daylight next to a sun-facing window I would've been just as creeped out at some parts. And the chills start pretty close to the beginning of the book and then sneak up on you afterward.The characters are compelling and I found myself invested in all of them, including the ones who barely got any page-time.I will definitely say that there are parts in this book that are not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of things that happened in this book which I was not expecting and which were quite disturbing. That's not a complaint, but I don't think it'll ruin the book or the experience of it to give that bit of caution.I also find this to be maybe the most satisfying book that I've read from King so far, as odd as that may be to say about a story like this one.While there were some parts that were a little bit slow, they didn't last long and nothing actually felt like it dragged. I think this is definitely a book that I'll always save from the donate bin and take down from the shelf again from time-to-time.Heck, who knows. Maybe I'll even be buried with it one day. ;)
An amazing novel by Stephen King who is an award winning author because of his other famous books,over more than twenty books. This haunted love story Bag of Bones is about a bond and connection about a lost love and a new love. Love that a has a horrible past about a young child who was shot and killed. A forty year old bestselling author Mike Noonan who lost his wife Jo. But now Mike is now starting to have these dreams causing him to move back to his summer house. Also he soon finds a town that he loved that looks similar on the outside but somehow had changed, thats what money can do. Max who was a filthy rich millionaire who has a young granddaughter and he wants to take her away from her young mom. More and more Mike Noonan keeps getting haunting visits but again in his dreams. This book will leave you gripping on to it because again Stephen King has done it again with an forgetting love story from his powerful imagination.
good ghost romance.
Great story. It has a bit of everything- history, small town paranoia, old grievances, mystery, ghosts!, hauntings, creepy villains, and even some good old fashioned romance. Plus Murder. A great yarn you'll get lost in and be sad when it's over.
Geez, Stephen King can tell a story. In its own way, this one is right up there with THE SHINING.
Very slow start. It takes 77 pages for Mr. Noonan to go to the house King so obviously wants him to go. 77 loooong pages! And until Max Devore calls on page 115, I came dangerously close to quitting reading this! But the call happens, the story ramps up, and I thoroughly enjoyed the 400 plus pages that followed! Like the back of the slip cover reads, this is "A Haunted Love Story". Centered around Sara Laughs (the lake house) and a horrible deed done in the past, the decedents of the TR have a bucketful of reckoning to do, and something, or someone, is game to see that they pay! The characters in this novel may be nothing more than a "bag of bones", but I really came to care about them and what happened to them, and that, for me, makes this a very good read! (minus, of course, the first hundred pages or so...)
Long drawn out love story with very little ghost, for a ghost story. Not what I signed up for.
It was alot of build up for a ok ending.
The book was decent. My bad review is for the audiobook itself. Makes a skipping noise and the narrator sounds like he is speaking in to a tin can. Glad to be done with it.
Bag of Bones is a ghost story, a love story, and a whodunit murder mystery. It is also a story that leaves the listener in doubt about the characters right through to the end. Complemented by sound and music, with lyrics by the author, it was well produced. Initally, it was somewhat slow paced, but picked up as the very long novel led on. Supernatural suspense added to the plot.
Once again, King manages to tell a tale filled with strong characters, imaginative backgrounds, and bring horror to the most mundane of circumstances.
[Review has spoilers] LIke most of King's works, this was a compelling read if not his best work. I didn't like that the ending left you hanging on several of the characters as well as the fate of the child, and I didn't like the fact that he killed off the heroine of the piece. But overall I enjoyed it.
I know I liked it, but truthfully I do not remember the plot.
It starts slow--very slow. The start is mostly the MC wallowing in protracted excuses for grief. Then he meets Mattie, and things begin to catch fire in this mainstream paranormal story. From about a third of the way in till the breathless ending (Yes, S. King actually gives us a decent ending to this one.), the story is well worth the read. The MC still has his "issues", but they're no more than any self-indulgent, urban male would exhibit, at least in my experience. (I'd say yuppi, but the guy's too old to qualify. Maybe "muppi" as in middle-aged urban professional...in this case an author? Anyway, I can't say anything more without giving away the best of the book--the last quarter of it--so I'll stop now.
Classic King. A wonderful ghost story with all the ends tied neatly. Characters beautifully drawn. However, I did find it rather wordy. Sometimes with King, his characters have too much back story that we probably don't need.
I guess it was bound to happen. I read a Stephen King. I have to admit that much of the reason lay behind his decision to leave Viking for Scribner's, Viking having decided that $17,000,000 for Bag of Bones was a little too hefty. After reading the novel, I suspect the decision was as much his agent's as his own.
The book is an uncomfortable mix of supernatural and psychological terror. One of the reasons I've delayed reading King is that I have difficulty turning a car into a killer, but then I have no imagination. Still, there is some good writing and I have to admit it's a real page-turner.
Mike Noonan is a successful writer of breezy mystery/thriller titles who has accumulated a comfortable bank account. His wife is killed by a stroke (or was it?) and this event creates a fearful writer's block. Just turning on his computer makes him physically ill. He is also tormented by dreams that seem to be calling him back to Sara Laughs, the name of their lake house, near the town of TR and on Dead Score Lake - both aptly named. Sara was the name of an African-American singer who had built the house many years before, was murdered, and whose malevolent presence haunts the house, although he doesn't know it yet.
He hears all sorts of strange noises and the refrigerator magnets don't you love that touch - begin spelling out strange messages.
Mike strikes up a friendship with Mattie, a lovely young widow and her three-year-old whose name bears an uncanny resemblance to that of his unborn child. He has learned that his wife was pregnant when she died, and he also learns that she had made numerous trips to Sara Laughs, meeting with a strange man and has been asking questions around town that had begun to seriously irritate the locals.
Mike's relationship also does more than irritate the locals; they leave veiled threats telling Mike to stop having anything to do with Mattie.
It turns out that Max Devore, a very wealthy man, and Mattie's father-in-law, wants custody of her child. Mike gets himself in deeper trouble when he hires a New York lawyer to help her in the custody battle. The threats escalate into killing and during a ferocious storm Mike discovers the secrets that his wife had ferreted out.
Personally, I would have preferred more of the psychological and less of the supernatural silliness, but I can see why King has been called the Dickens of the twentieth century.
The book is an uncomfortable mix of supernatural and psychological terror. One of the reasons I've delayed reading King is that I have difficulty turning a car into a killer, but then I have no imagination. Still, there is some good writing and I have to admit it's a real page-turner.
Mike Noonan is a successful writer of breezy mystery/thriller titles who has accumulated a comfortable bank account. His wife is killed by a stroke (or was it?) and this event creates a fearful writer's block. Just turning on his computer makes him physically ill. He is also tormented by dreams that seem to be calling him back to Sara Laughs, the name of their lake house, near the town of TR and on Dead Score Lake - both aptly named. Sara was the name of an African-American singer who had built the house many years before, was murdered, and whose malevolent presence haunts the house, although he doesn't know it yet.
He hears all sorts of strange noises and the refrigerator magnets don't you love that touch - begin spelling out strange messages.
Mike strikes up a friendship with Mattie, a lovely young widow and her three-year-old whose name bears an uncanny resemblance to that of his unborn child. He has learned that his wife was pregnant when she died, and he also learns that she had made numerous trips to Sara Laughs, meeting with a strange man and has been asking questions around town that had begun to seriously irritate the locals.
Mike's relationship also does more than irritate the locals; they leave veiled threats telling Mike to stop having anything to do with Mattie.
It turns out that Max Devore, a very wealthy man, and Mattie's father-in-law, wants custody of her child. Mike gets himself in deeper trouble when he hires a New York lawyer to help her in the custody battle. The threats escalate into killing and during a ferocious storm Mike discovers the secrets that his wife had ferreted out.
Personally, I would have preferred more of the psychological and less of the supernatural silliness, but I can see why King has been called the Dickens of the twentieth century.
After bestselling author Mike Noonan's wife dies, he suffers the world's worst case of writer's block, learns that there are some things that his wife never told him about, discovers that his summer house is haunted, and gets drawn into a custody battle between a nice young woman and her nasty old father-in-law.It's a decent read, although far from perfect. The narrative cheats a little here and there (although maybe mostly in excusable ways), and it ends with an unfortunately clunky, exposition-laden epilog. There's a small child who's only occasionally believable as being the age she's supposed to be, and a bad guy so cartoonishly evil that during the (mercifully short) time that he's actually, so to speak, on-screen, my suspension of disbelief snapped like a twig. And there's a plot point near the end that's such an unpleasant cliche that even the main character explicitly acknowledges how bad it is. (I can't quite make up my mind whether that makes it more palatable or not.) I suppose I should also add that this definitely isn't a book for those who aren't okay with reading about a lot of ugly topics, as it features everything from small-town racism to sexual violence to murdered children. Although maybe that kind of warning goes without saying when you're talking about a horror novel.Anyway. Definitely a flawed book, but the story itself is good enough. The main character is well-drawn -- perhaps unsurprisingly, since if there's one thing King knows, it's what the inside of a writer's mind is like. The ghost story elements aren't quite as creepy as King can be at his best -- possibly deliberately, as if they were too hair-raising, it would be impossible to believe the guy would ever stay in that house, no matter what excuses the author comes up with to keep him there -- but they're interesting nonetheless. As are the bits of history that King slowly reveals.Like many later Stephen King novels, though, it does suffer from being way, way longer than it really ought to be. It's not that it's tediously slow; the individual pages turn fast enough, for the most part. It's just that it's so easy to see that it'd be immensely to the book's benefit if it were trimmed down and tightened up by at least a couple hundred pages. As it was, by the time I was two-thirds of the way through, the main question in my mind wasn't, "Gosh, I wonder what's going to happen next?", but "How is it that I haven't finished this thing yet?" King did manage to recapture my flagging interest well enough before the end, but, of course, he'd have done better not to lose it in the first place.
Some of the scenes in the book are cliched, and at times too-King-like (another story about a writer who lives in a small Maine town). But it's a decent read.
Huh. I thought I had this in my Goodreads list, but I guess I read it so long ago, it was never tracked. I "reread" this as an audiobook read by Stephen King, and enjoyed it immensely. King is a good reader - his excellent diction is much appreciated by this hard of hearing listener - and the parts that were supposed to be scary were. An added benefit is that some blues was added to the reading to underscore one of the ghosts, who was a blues singer in the 1930s. I got the audiobook from Audible. I'd recommend it, but Audible books can only be burned to CD once, and that was a problem for me. Still, that doesn't detract from the content.
Bag of Bones
by Stephen King
Hodder & Stoughton, 516 pages, hardback, 1998
Jo, the wife of successful thriller writer Mike Noonan, dies
suddenly and still quite young from a brain aneurysm. In grief,
he suffers a dramatic case of writer's block, but is able to get
by for a few years by covertly publishing novels he'd written
earlier but never told his publisher about. But then the "spares"
run out, and he must, somehow, get his act together to write
something new. In desperation, he decides to go to the summer
home he and Jo had in a remote part of Maine, a house he hasn't
found the courage to visit since Jo's death. On arrival he finds
that the house, called Sara Laughs in honour of a local turn-of-
the-century blues singer called Sara Tidwell, is haunted. Also he
meets and falls in love with widowed Mattie Devore and her three-
year-old daughter Kyra; Mattie's vastly wealthy father-in-law Max
is determined to get custody of the child, and so Mike steps in
to help Mattie fight him through the courts. In so doing, Mike
begins to unearth a truly ghastly tale of what happened one
summer's day ninety years ago to Sara Tidwell, and the terrible
revenge her spirit has been exacting from the descendants of her
murderers.
King has always been a masterful page-turner — even his
weakest books are usually immensely readable. But through most of
his long career he has rarely aspired to be more than that —
which is an observation rather than a criticism, because there's
many a respected literary novelist who could improve his or her
art by learning a little of King's craft. At the same time there
has been the feeling that, in books like Rose Madder and
Insomnia, King himself has become a little impatient with
the self-imposed shackles of "mere" craftsmanship.
With Bag of Bones he's finally made the breakthrough,
and it is as a serious literary novel that this book should be
judged. That's not to say that he has lost any of his ability to
tell a spellbinding tale — and this is one of his very best,
a stunningly good and often very frightening ghost story that
owes much to the tradition of M.R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu and,
to name a modern example, the excellent Jonathan Aycliffe. But
what makes this book so intensely gripping is something more than
that — and more, too, than the fine, perceptive and often
disturbingly funny writing: it is the superb depiction of
character and situation. We care about these people; we
share with Mike Noonan his slow discovery that his loss of Jo is
at an even more profound depth than he or we could have imagined,
that she was a finer person than even he had realized; and lordie
do we come to share his growing love for Mattie and the child
Kyra. And all this is achieved through the use of a very
difficult narrational gambit: although Mike is our narrator, our
storyspinner, and thus is present on every page and is the eye
through which we see, he is not in fact the central character
— that role is shared by Kyra and Mattie and by the dead Jo
and Sara, for this is in part also a novel about women and the
male perception of them.
There are various undercurrents in this novel. Inevitably
there are aspects of metafiction about it — for King is like
his creation a successful novelist (more successful and more
prolific than Mike Noonan) and the very title is drawn from a
remark by Thomas Hardy to the effect that even the finest
fictional character is but a bag of bones when compared to a real
person. If King falters anywhere, it is in the handling of these
metafictional aspects — a slight failure, seemingly born of
timidity. But the most important underlyer is the sense of and
deep appreciation of human loss: Jo is lost to Mike and the
world, as even more profoundly is Sara, whose songs are available
only through interpretations at the hands of others, for no
recordings of her survive. Mike's ability to write is lost —
ask any writer and you'll be told that this is a true nightmare
of the soul. The only loss that can be averted is that of the
child Kyra, who is sought by both the living and the dead.
This is a very powerful book, and a fine example of what the
late-twentieth-century novel can do. And should be doing more
often.
This review, first published by Samhain, is
excerpted from my ebook Warm Words and Otherwise: A Blizzard
of Book Reviews, to be published on September 19 by Infinity
Plus Ebooks.
Good ghost story.
One of Stephen King's subtler, and best books. Love the historic setting and the very slow buildup to an excruciating climax.
Bag of Bones is really pretty weird. It actually spooked me quite a bit, although reading it at three AM didn't exactly help with that. And it took me a long, long time to figure out what was actually going on.
In terms of the characters, I didn't get particularly attached to any of them, but I liked them fine. The main character, Mike, sounds quite a bit like some other King heroes, I think, from his inner voice, but that didn't bother me too much. The thing I really liked was the picture of the relationship between him and his dead wife that was built up. I actually didn't want him to get together with Mattie or anything, although I hated what actually happened with her. The parts with Kyra were really, really cute, and I was really glad of the ending they seemed set to get.
The way the house was haunted with all kinds of different ghosts was confusing. I quite liked that, since you pretty much share in the way Mike feels, but I also felt like the story could have been a lot slicker, quicker. This one really isn't as fast-paced as others. There's reasons for that, of course, it relies on suspense more than anything, and a slow build, but... maybe too slow? And the repetitive dream sequences got kind of annoying.
The climax, though, was confusing and scary and thrilling, and I was pretty glad I stuck with it.
Once again, not my favourite of King's books -- probably won't ever reread it, will probably pass my nice hardback copy along somewhere along the line -- but I enjoyed it.
In terms of the characters, I didn't get particularly attached to any of them, but I liked them fine. The main character, Mike, sounds quite a bit like some other King heroes, I think, from his inner voice, but that didn't bother me too much. The thing I really liked was the picture of the relationship between him and his dead wife that was built up. I actually didn't want him to get together with Mattie or anything, although I hated what actually happened with her. The parts with Kyra were really, really cute, and I was really glad of the ending they seemed set to get.
The way the house was haunted with all kinds of different ghosts was confusing. I quite liked that, since you pretty much share in the way Mike feels, but I also felt like the story could have been a lot slicker, quicker. This one really isn't as fast-paced as others. There's reasons for that, of course, it relies on suspense more than anything, and a slow build, but... maybe too slow? And the repetitive dream sequences got kind of annoying.
The climax, though, was confusing and scary and thrilling, and I was pretty glad I stuck with it.
Once again, not my favourite of King's books -- probably won't ever reread it, will probably pass my nice hardback copy along somewhere along the line -- but I enjoyed it.
I was scared, moved and thrilled by this book. I wish the miniseries had been 1/10th as good...
This is a middling Stephen King book for me. I think he repeats a lot of themes he's already explored, but it's still as suspenseful a page turner as any King novel. The main character is a writer, and I think he gives some glimpses into King's writing habits.
Another very good book by King. This is a definite ghost story, at times exciting, quite mysterious and intriguing.
There are so many good reviews of this that of course I had to read it. It?s one of King?s many books that I never got around to, and with the number of books this man writes and publishes, I?m not surprised it took me this long to read it. Mike Noonan is an author, a good mid-list author at that. He leads a comfortable life with his wife Jo in New England. When Jo unexpectedly dies of a brain aneurysm, Mike is left alone and almost incapacitated by her sudden death. His wife also left him with a bit of mystery and he wants answers. Since Jo?s death, Mike has developed writer?s block, something he?s never even briefly experienced in his career as a writer. Thinking a change in scenery will help with his writer?s block and hopefully quell the obsession he?s developing with his dead wife?s coming and goings, Mike heads to his vacation house on a lake in the woods of Maine. Shortly after arriving, he finds himself caught up in a nasty custody battle over a three year-old girl he accidently made friends with when he saw her walking down the middle of a busy road. Unwilling to let Mattie, the young mother, get destroyed by the system, Mike steps in and learns what it means to be a stranger in this part of Maine.I jumped into this book anticipating a full out ghost story and found myself in the middle of a custody battle. Strange how books emerge sometimes. The ghost element was more than strong and I liked the small town history and how it all tied back to Mike and the property he owns but the custody battle felt like it really never fit for me even when every last tie was explained. I think my expectations were set up to be very different from what I actually got in reading the book. This sounds negative but it?s not. It just wasn?t what I had in mind when I started this book. That said, I did enjoy this book very much. It reminded me of 11/22/63 in the slight love story that starts to develop, and then when the ghosts start in, there?s nowhere to hide for the reader or the characters. This book spooked me early on but as the story got going, I was more interested in the ghosts themselves than some of the living characters. Anything that scared me in the beginning was out the door by this time because I wanted to know every last detail of this town?s ghosts and have them out every bitter secret.Even with all the ghosts and their brutal pasts emerging, the main story was sad. Mike Noonan is a man lost without his wife and drifting without a career now that he can no longer write without getting violently ill. When he decides to visit the lake home, he hopes he?ll be able to write again, and when he does, it?s not what he thinks it will be. He ends up have to mourn not only his wife but a part of his life he never thought he?d lose. The custody battle is heartbreaking, as all are, but there?s a cruel aspect to it all that ties back very well to the area?s unfortunately well-known and well-hidden past.There are a few references to Daphne du Maurier?s Rebecca in Bag of Bones. I adored Rebecca and referencing it here only made my love of it stronger. Why not invoke a book with a ghostly aspect to enhance another ghost story? I know many people might stay away from an author like King and may not like horror/ghosts stories either. Well, in some ways this book is many of those things but I still want to encourage you to try it. It?s a good story with some extra supernatural parts to make it interesting. It?s more than its ghosts. In other words, it?s a keeper.
This is one of those books that I had been meaning to read forever but kept putting off in lieu of newer books on my list. The first third of the book kept my attention and made it impossible for me to put it down. I was speculating and making theories (all signs of a good books for me) and all of that good stuff. However, the last bit of the book sort of drags out and I had to struggle through it. Though, I'm not sure if it was really because the book itself was dragging or because I took on such a long book and didn't give myself any sort of breaks (I feel this is necessary to mention because sometimes I do need breaks or I feel like it's a chore, it's a bad book habit- I feel this is something readers would have to judge for themselves).All that being said, I enjoyed my overall experience and am glad I finally read the book.