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A review by blankpagealex
Holly by Stephen King
3.0
The inherent risk of making COVID-19 such an essential character in a book is that all of us who lived through it can't help but compare the story to our own experience. King nicely captures the awkward tension that constantly existed during the pandemic between people who took it seriously and those who did not. However, my memory seems to recall that elbow bumps and wearing gloves to go shopping had mostly gone away by Summer of 2021, when most of the novel is set. There was definitely a tension between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, but wasn't Summer of 2021 that brief period when we thought COVID was mostly behind us as vaccinations increased and cases declined?
This is to say that the focus on the pandemic, the divisions created by Trump, and the racial tensions in a nation in turmoil was more of a focus for my reading attention than the actual story of a cat and mouse game between private detective Holly Gibney and two octogenarian killers. This book is about a very specific moment in time that we will look back on decades from now and remember is a pivotal point in world history. It's impossible to set a book in the United States of 2021 without making COVID at least part of the story, but the constant mention of COVID protocols made me as a reader focus on that, rather than the other things the story was trying to say.
This is to say that the focus on the pandemic, the divisions created by Trump, and the racial tensions in a nation in turmoil was more of a focus for my reading attention than the actual story of a cat and mouse game between private detective Holly Gibney and two octogenarian killers. This book is about a very specific moment in time that we will look back on decades from now and remember is a pivotal point in world history. It's impossible to set a book in the United States of 2021 without making COVID at least part of the story, but the constant mention of COVID protocols made me as a reader focus on that, rather than the other things the story was trying to say.