I don't much care for cell phones. I got rid of my own last year when I realized I hardly ever used it. Stephen King doesn't much seem to like them either. They're the trigger that leads to worldwide apocalypse in his taut, invigorating new novel, Cell. It's the best non-Dark Tower novel the man has written in several years, satisfyingly gory and frightening, with a magnificent hook.
Cell launches like a rocket and doesn't let up the white-knuckle tension for several chapters. It all starts one bright autumn day in Boston as aspiring comic book artist Clay Riddell stops in a park to enjoy an ice-cream cone. Suddenly, half the people around him go insane. The cause appears to be an unheard pulse that affects anybody who uses a cell phone — the majority of Americans, in other words. The Pulse erases their minds, turning them into savage, zombie-like beasts. It's nothing less than the end of the world.
Clay and a small band of survivors meet up and together try to make their way in this awful new reality. But those affected by the Pulse aren't staying animalistic killers — they're evolving, into something terrible and new. Cell is fast-moving, relatively compact (it doesn't suffer from the excessive bloat that's marred some of King's novels), and in the end, it's a vision haunting enough to stick with you.
Stephen King is like a good cheeseburger for me – not the fanciest thing on the menu, but gosh darn it, he fills you up. The man can tell a story, and I've enjoyed many of his 30-something novels. After a certain point, a writer repeats himself a bit, and Cell does bear some resemblance to one of King's best, the equally apocalyptic The Stand. It lacks that novel's enormous scope and cast, but Cell is his strongest since 1999's Hearts of Atlantis.
Article comments
1 - Paul Roy
Nice Review. It sounds like a great read. I haven't read any King since "Four Past Midnight" in 1990, but I have never been dissapointed by a King book. Just don't have the time for that much fiction anymore.
2 - Ray
This guy deserves the millions he makes. He's such dark, strange and utterly fantastical imagination. This may not be a literary classic, but I bet it's a darn good piece of entertainment.
3 - Luke
Sounds sortof like 'the wind named amnesia' the whole world loses it's memory except for one crippled kid who was part of a govt. experiment to see how technology could enhance memory, that kid then taught another kid (one of the lost memory people) how to speak and drive and fire a gun and all sorts of useful stuff, who then went out into the world to try and re-teach humanity everything it forgot.
4 - Joanne D. Kiggins
Thanks for posting this review, Nik. I just ordered The Cell and am looking forward to reading it.
I have a copy of every one of King's books with the exception of My Pretty Pony which was a limited edition.
5 - Eric Berlin
This story has been chosen as an Editors' Pick of the Week. You now have the grave yet giddy honor of selecting a story for next week's best of column if you like (time frame 2/1 " 2/7). Simply leave the title, URL, and a brief description of why you dig it on this week's post (link above).
Congrats!!
Nik -- You can read my thoughts over on the column, but I thought you did a great job with this... can't believe you don't include The Shining though!
6 - ms madder
F off he is the master. Maybe you just dont get the point, people don't matter. We are only a blink in time. We still manage to f it up so get off the phone and talk to the person sitting next to you!!!!
7 - Joanne Carey
Just finished "The Cell", and I still can't get beyond the basic issue of an organic entity, the 'phone crazies', somehow being tagged to be the next species of human.
Being from Wakefield (and living and vacationing along most of the route mentioned in the book), I know how cold and damp it is in that area in October.
No way would people sleeping in the open, with open sores (never mind wounds) not die of exposure or from complications of their wounds.
While I found a lot of parables in the setting between this and "The Stand", I just couldn't get beyond the fact that everyone got up the next morning and continued their 'crazy' life, without complications from night after night of exposure, little food and no medical care.
Great audio book for the ride to and from work this week, but certainly beyond belief from this reader's viewpoint.
8 - Jude
Whew, it's finally over. The Cell was like an itch I couldn't stop scratching until I made it bleed. Mildly entertaining but, at best, a C- overall. What the heck was the ending?
9 - TMS
Agreed! Please, please, please, can someone explain the ending to me????? It was a snoozer for me, but I plowed on out of respect for the master. Disappointed? You bet. But this is the first King tome I've read where I got to the end of the last page and went, "Huh?".....what happened when the phone went to Johnny Gee's ear????
10 - Eduardo
Same question here...
11 - Becky
Ditto
12 - Jessica
Don't understand the ending... anyone know and care to explain?