Roadwork by Stephen King
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Book Reviews of Roadwork
Book Review: GOOD BOOK
Summary: 5 Stars
So far "Roadwork" is my favorite King book. It descriibes the story of Bart Dawes, a man working for a laundrymat whose house and job are in the way of a new highway. Unlike the normal civilian however, Bart has BIG issues with this and does everything he can to stop it. It shows how King can really write a nonhoror story that still grips you til you turn the last page. A great stroy...no...A MUST READ!Book Review: Amazon is awesome! Thanks for supporting the troops!
Summary: 5 Stars
I ordered this for my military son serving in the middle east. Amazon went into high speed to get this to him. I ordered some things for myself, the same day and his package arrived on the other side of the world before I got mine! This is a good thing!
Thanks, Amazon for supporting the troops. You always sent the APO packages out faster to make sure he got them!!!
Book Review: A Great Story For Times When You Hate The World
Summary: 5 Stars
--This story is something you can relate to when you are having some bad times or when you want to speak your mind and everyone knows you are right but won't listen because it is not the "norm". It easy to relate to because you hate some things and you can't control them and you want to blow everything up and take your stand. Great book!!Book Review: Couldn't put it down
Summary: 5 Stars
I thought at first after reading other reviews of this book that it would be a slow moving book, but it wasn't at all slow, granted I had to concentrate on my working schedule but once I got home I read some more. Yes, there were slow spots in the book, but being a King fan, I just kept on reading.Book Review: A tale of the first energy crisis...
Summary: 4 Stars
Roadwork starts off suspensefully, as a crazed man with a knack for carrying on conversations with himself buys a high-caliber rifle and a .44 Magnum revolver. However, the explosive result of this purchase, which you might expect to be soon coming, doesn't arrive until the very end of the book. To get there, we must wade through some very dense, overly-detailed (but very well written) exposition.
Bart Dawes has finally been pushed too far; at age 40, he's lost his only son to a brain tumor, and now the public works commission has decided to build a new highway system, which will not only go through (and thereby erase) the building Bart's worked in for the past twenty years, but also his home. Bart must move, but he refuses to. In the process, Bart will lose his job, his friends, his wife, and his sanity, but he stands strong in his refusal to leave his home, reminiscent in a way of Hank Stamper in Ken Kesey's "Sometimes a Great Notion."
Roadwork is different than anything Stephen King (well, Richard Bachman, to be precise) has written; it's more a character study than anything else. As King himself wrote in his "Why I Was Bachman" introduction to the first edition of The Bachman Books, "Roadwork is probably the worst of the lot, because it tries so hard to be good." And that's the whole of it: Roadwork reads like it's been written by a young writer who's trying hard to appeal to the literary crowd. It's verbose, packed with introspection, and moves along at a snail's pace; the total opposite of the Bachman/King extravaganza The Running Man.
It's no surprise that King relates that Roadwork was written at a time when he was trying to impress those elitists whom would ask him at cocktail parties if he'd ever write "something important." (Interestingly, in the second edition of the Bachman Books, in a foreword titled "The Importance of Being Bachman," King states that Roadwork is now his favorite of the Bachman bunch.)
This is not to say Roadwork is a bad book, or even a boring book. It takes dedication to keep turning those pages when you begin reading it, but in time you adjust to the casual pace of the narrative, you begin to learn (and respect) who Bart Dawes is, and you root for him, no matter how nuts he's become.
The ending finally picks up the pace, as Dawes accepts his fate and brings those guns into play, as well as a generous supply of explosives. In that regard, Roadwork packs the suspenseful punch you'd normally associate with the books under Richard Bachman's name. But with its slow pace, grim view on the world (the Bachman view is generally that life sucks, and terrible things happen for no reason), combined with its firm rooting in the 1970s (which might make it inaccessible to those who weren't around in that decade), Roadwork might not appeal to the average King/Bachman fan. However, for those looking for an intense character study that slowly builds to an explosive climax, it comes recommended.