If you could travel back in time, to September 9, 1958, Tuesday, at 11:58 a.m. to be exact, what would you do? Would you change anything?
That’s the date Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon, Maine, had the liberty of traveling to whenever he wanted. Every visit was a reset, meaning everything he does, everything he changes, in 1958 is automatically erased and restored to its original. Which is convenient if one wants to alter a major part of history—you could always come back to the present and revisit 1958 to make a reset in case everything backfires. Nothing to worry about, right?
For Jake, altering a major part of history means preventing the slaughter of the entire family of Lisbon High School’s janitor, Harry Dunning. It also means preventing the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
Jake putting a stop to an assassination in 1963 required living five years in the past, that is, finding a place to stay, getting a job, acquiring money, relating to the townspeople, stalking suspects, gaining new friends and falling in love—in other words, building an entirely new life from scratch (and all without the technology we have today, or in Jake’s case, his present-day 2011). Usually, I don’t like a lot of romance being incorporated in a thriller or a mystery (if I wanted romance, I would read a romance novel), but this was an exception. It wasn’t the sappy kind of love. Jake and Sadie’s love was real and realistic. I never expected to cry when Jake tirelessly took care of Sadie after her face had been disfigured—when he had to change the bedsheet because she peed on it or when he suspended his mission because she was suffering. He loved her no matter what, slashed face or no slashed face.
11/22/63 by Stephen King was brilliant, thrilling and heartwarming—the best time-travel novel I’ve read so far. I was amazed by how interactions in the 1950s changed, and how lives in the present changed, whenever Jake did something different in each visit, and I found myself imagining the same for my life, how different it would be if I could make slight alterations—the butterfly effect is truly interesting. But then, as the Green Card Man said, you need to come back to the present and “see exactly what you’ve done.”
“Humans were built to look back; that’s why we have that swivel joint in our necks.”
Aside from the mystery of whether Jake would figure out if Lee Harvey Oswald had killed JFK and successfully rewrite history (and what happens after it), I was truly fascinated by the food of the fifties and sixties as described in the book. The way Stephen King described them made my mouth water, even if they were just root beer, hamburgers, chocolate pie, milk shake, French fries sizzling with grease and apple pie à la mode. They were all “full” and “rich,” a kind of quality that only belonged in the past and would never ever be replicated. There are recipes in the book (meals Jake Epping himself enjoyed) that I want to try (I’ll start with the tuna salad), as well as a playlist, which I listened to after reading and which brought back a few scenes, particularly the Lindy Hopping. My favorite song from the playlist (one I’ve never heard before) was “At the Hop” by Danny and the Juniors.
This was my first Stephen King novel, and I loved his writing style. It’s too bad I’m such a scaredy-cat; I was hoping to read more of his work, but unfortunately, I find most of them frightening. I tried to read one novel of his once (I forgot which) and couldn’t get past page 11 because of the horrifying events. But 11/22/63 was perfect—suspenseful but not too scary or creepy. I know it goes without saying, but I highly recommend this historical time-travel read. (Also, the date I wrote and published this review is purely coincidental. I guess it’s true what Stephen King said, “the past harmonizes.”)
Sunny Day Reads 
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