The Science of Stephen King

  

I have been highly anticipating The Science of Stephen King for quite some time. Not only am I a fan of Stephen King's work, I am also a fan of the other books in this particular series that includes The Science of Monsters. Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence dig into the different truths that are illuminated in Stephen King’s stories through interviews and library/internet research.

The interviews that they conducted brought more life and understanding to King’s stories. Since King’s characters to be very psychologically astute, It is no surprise that a handful of interviews were by different forms of therapists—a crisis therapist was interviewed to discuss addictions related to The Shining a grief counselor provided insight for  Lisey’s Story and an art therapist provided insights for  for Duma Key.  To illuminate the truths behind King’s more supernatural themes people who claim to have expertise in more paranormal fields were interviewed for the themes in Insomnia, an aura photographer was interviewed and a psychic talked about their journey for The Institute.  I do have the bias that while I find the kinds of topics that people who claim to have expertise in the supernatural to be quite fascinating, the part of my brain that likes things like logic, evidence and the scientific method tends to be cynical when more supernatural topics are portrayed as truth. As a result, I really appreciated that the authors utilized the approach of sharing parts of the interviews verbatim that helped humanize the truths instead of just uplifting these as straight facts. It made it easier for a cynic to read and enjoy.

Even though I found the interviews fascinating, I do not want to discount how brilliant the facts that are illuminated from more conventional library/internet research were for bringing the truths behind Stephen King to life either.  This was how I learned that coulrophobia is the fear of clowns during the discussion of “It” and more about the history of phone technology during the chapter on “Cell.” But it does not feel like a dry academic study as everything is presented in a fun, very accessible way that is enough to entice your appetite to pursue topics of interest in more depth.

Each chapter is easy to read as an interesting standalone essay and the book is structured by each decade that King has written in.  This structure makes the book very accessible to read. People who are fans of Stephen King will definitely enjoy the insights in this book and people who have yet to enjoy King’s works will be intrigued to read his work to see how these topics are explored in his stories. As for me, it makes me realize that even though I love the work of Stephen King that I have read there are a lot more of his stories that I still need to read.  I now have even more insight on some of the stories that I want to read. When it comes to my taste in non-fiction I really love books that make me want to dive further into other topics and new pieces of literature and I am obsessed with horror fiction, so this book definitely is definitely the sort of book that I NEED to have on my shelf.

Thank you to the authors for an advanced copy of this delightful book!

I also published this review on Goodreads