Bag of Bones

Synopsis:

Several years after his wife's death, novelist Mike Noonan still suffers writer's block. A dream inspires him to return to the couple's summer retreat in western Maine, a lakeside house called Sara Laughs. Shortly after arriving, Noonan is caught in the middle of a custody battle involving the daughter of an attractive young widow and the child's enormously wealthy grandfather. He also discovers that Sara Laughs is haunted and that his late wife, Joanna, still has something to tell him.

My review:

I once read that great writers are great readers and people have been asking me what books I read. Ok I think that they read my version of a love story and ponder what kind of warped mind could write a love story like this and ponder what kinds of books I read. This is easily my favourite Stephen King book. It was actually the first of many Stephen King books that I read.

At first I thought that it wasn’t a very scary book. This is a ghost story about being haunted, both by spirits and by memories. It’s about a forty something writer Mike Noonan that can no longer write. He is plagued by vivid nightmares set in his western Maine summerhouse he calls Sara Laughs, desperately he returns to the lakeside getaway. His getaway is in a sparsely populated fading resort town with a dark historic past. The mystery and the hauntings are linked in with a child custody battle, complete with a nefarious old villain, and a damsel in distress, Mattie. There’s a custody battle over a three-year girl name Kyra. As you follow along you discover the towns secrets and how Mike Noonan is smack dab in the middle.

Like many Stephen King books, the characters he creates seem almost real. Throughout Bag of Bones, the central character, Mike Noonan has little pieces of all of us in him. You come to think of Mike as someone who really existed. Of course if Mike really existed, then the Sara Laughs story must be real-and there in lies the horror.

It is no secret that King is one of our most mesmerizing storytellers. In Bag of Bones, he proves to be one of our most moving as well. I know some say that the story could have told in half the size, but I honestly think that it’s a great book with characters that jump out at you and make you want to keep reading into the late hours of the night.

Smile JD