If he is the undisputed master of horror, Stephen King is also a magician in his way of treating childhood as one of the fine arts. And he does not deprive himself of it – from the classic That recent The institute, and now with After.
Short novel according to “kingian” standards (not even 350 pages), After introduces us to the young Jamie Conklin who, at six, discovered he could see the dead. But not like Cole Sear in The Sixth Sense, takes the time to specify the author through the character.
The kid sees in fact those who have just died in the state in which they died. With the clothes they wore then, but also with their sometimes horrifying wounds and wounds. Yes, Jamie has nightmares.
Two things about these “specters”: they disappear after a few hours or days; and above all, they cannot lie when asked questions. This can be very practical to find missing objects, to obtain information and even to put an end to an unfinished but long-awaited novel.
Except that it can also be very dangerous. For example when a police inspector in search of recognition forces the boy, of whom she is one of the only ones to know the secret and the gift, to give her a hand. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of lives, are at stake. And the perpetrator of this budding crime has blown his brains out.
The problem is that this dead man is not like the others. Otherwise there would be noAfter.
Stephen King is very good at integrating horror and, better still, dread into the ordinary lives of ordinary people. Here he introduces us to Jamie. He tells us about his accomplice relationship with his mother. He makes us love him. Then, he places this unlikely and pure hero face to face with the most vile Evil. It’s David versus Goliath and, the genre being what it is, the author being who he is, you never know who is going to win.
Result: with its meticulous implementation followed by a formidable implementation, and with its effective narration down to the detail, After may not be as rich as The institute, but it’s impossible to get it – especially since in the world according to King, readers know, “it’s never over until it’s over.”