I read the entire Bill Hodges trilogy over the last few months and really enjoyed it. I got Holly on audiobook and started listening to it and found it extremely off-putting with its ham fisted interjection of politics.
Charlotte Gibney was set up as an unlikable, overbearing character in Mr. Mercedes. Here, Stephen King obviously took great pleasure in literary voodoo by making her a “MAGA anti-vaxer” who dies because of it. He repeatedly lauds the virtue of masks and vaccines for long sections for seemingly no reason, other than to spout his own beliefs. Holly Gibney, a unique and interesting character, is reduced to his mouthpiece as she “cries when Biden won.”
I’m very disappointed. Yes, Stephen King has “gotten political” in his writing before. I’ve read a dozen of his more popular works and some short stories, including IT, The Stand, The Outsider, Tommy knockers, the Institute. There was never a prolonged moment, or series of moments, where I felt so transported out of the writing. A main character, even a main villain like Brady Hartsfield, has never stopped the story to tell us the moral righteousness of their political beliefs. Expounding the main character’s love of masks and vaccines for a short section would’ve certainly felt appropriate; after all, it’s believable for Holly Gibney. But to go on so long is astounding.
Did anybody else experience this? Was I just blind to it in his other books?
by AchtungPanzer41