The short version:

Hearts in Atlantis is a very good book. I <3 Stephen King.

The long version:

Stephen King has said that Lord of the Flies is the one novel he wishes he could have written. William Golding beat him to it, but it’s probably for the best, as King’s Hearts in Atlantis, his own take on the themes and ideas behind Lord of the Flies (and then some) is far stronger than Golding’s classic.

King’s novel, if one can even call it that, consists of five parts – two long stories, 300 and 200 pages respectively and three shorter stories – featuring interconnecting characters, common themes and ideas, and some sort of relationship to the 1960s. This is Stephen King’s Lord of the Flies, and because Stephen King is Stephen King, because he is a writer of popular fiction and because he doesn’t like to leave any of his mysteries as mysteries, King goes to great lengths to make this excruciatingly clear. Lord of the Flies is at least mentioned in four of the stories, and is mentioned a hell of a lot in the first one.

The first story in the collection, titled Low Men in Yellow Coats, takes place in the summer of 1960 as Ted, a mysterious old man who carries his large book collection in paper bags, moves in above the 11-year-old Bobby Garfield and his single mother. Ted and Bobby foster a relationship and Bobby spends the summer with his friends Sully John and Carol, dealing with the neighborhood bullies, first kisses, and the pains of growing up. Like Stand by Me, It, or Hearts in Atlantis as a whole, Low Men in Yellow Coats is a story of the loss of innocence. It is a story of growing older and of learning what separates the adults from the children.

At the same time, it is the story with the most direct relationship with Lord of the Flies. As Bobby reads through Golding’s novel, he begins to see the events and themes of the novel appear in his daily life. He learns that people do bad things, and it’s easier for people to do bad things in groups, when people who would do good things are unable to act. Because the good and the weak are often times one and the same.

Low Men in Yellow Coats is also the story which the film adaptation of the book is entirely based on. It’s also the reason I read this book in the first place. You see, Low Men in Yellow Coats could have just as easily been titled The Dark Tower 4.5. The low men, who obviously play a major roll in the story, once again play major rolls in The Dark Tower 5 and 6. Bobby learns of “other worlds than these,” of the breakers of the Crimson King, of the dark tower, of the beam, and of the rose. Though all these elements are there, the story is much more than just a Dark Tower story. All of Stephen King’s stories take place in the world of the Dark Tower, this one just a little more than most. And though at times it feels a little too much like self-indulgence on King’s part, it doesn’t really hurt the story, or the book, in any way. Hell, it just wouldn’t be a Stephen King book without at least some sort of supernatural element.

Now is the point where I shutup and start being brief. Just kidding.

The second story in the novel, the titular Hearts in Atlantis, finds Pete Riley and Carol (Bobby’s Carol) as freshman at the University of Maine in 1966. Pete should probably spend his time studying, because if he doesn’t he’ll find himself out of college and “in the green” of Vietnam, but the third floor of his dorm has turned into a perpetual hearts tournament and Pete is unable to escape the call of the addicting card game. Once again we find the ease which with groups slide into a state of dystopia, and once again we watch as innocence fades (in more ways than one).

Hearts in Atlantis (the story) is just as strong, just as touching, as Low Men in Yellow Coats. Written as a sort of memoir of an aging hippie, we once again get King’s take on Lord of the Flies. An actual copy of the book once again shows up in the narrative. These two stories then comprise 525 pages of the 670 page book. They are the meat, baby, the main course, and the remaining three stories are the desert. A better analogy which isn’t an analogy at all: the first two stories rise, the last three stories fall. The climax is obviously in there somewhere.

So, the third story of the book, Blind Willie, takes place in 1983 as Willie (shock), a Vietnam veteran with plenty of ties to characters from the first two stories, leads a secretive triple life. He has not read Lord of the Flies. Willie’s the sort of man who believes in the importance of penance. He’s very sorry for a lot of things. He’s the sort of man who has some trouble with the past. A lot of trouble. He just can’t seem to get over the things he’s done, and he’s a done of lot of things, many of them good, but it’s the bad stuff that gives him all the trouble. And it’s the bad stuff, even after all his penance, that just has a habit of finding him again.

The entire story is just 80 pages long, which is extremely short for King, and takes place over the course of a single day in 1983, either December 16th or December 17th, depending on how you do your math, which makes it either six months after Bloomsday, the day which Ulysses takes place, or the day after six months after Bloomsday. Either way, it’s probably not a coincidence, and I should probably look for some Homeric parallels. This time, it’s all about the past, rather than any sort of present, and Willie isn’t the only man with some trouble looking back on yesteryear.

The fourth story in the book, Why We’re in Vietnam, has Bobby’s boyhood friend of Sully John attending the funereal for one his squadmates from Vietnam. It’s 1999 and Sully still sees the woman Ronnie, who loved chasing The Bitch in the hearts games on the third floor of a certain dorm at the University of Main, murdered on one hot Vietnamese afternoon. Sully lost one of his balls that afternoon. Sully hasn’t read Lord of the Flies, but he knows that Bobby has.

At the funeral, Sully runs into his old new lieutenant from the war, and the two of them get to talking. The 60s are gone, Atlantis has sunk, and it’s getting harder and harder not to sink with it. But Sully doesn’t have too much time for talking. He’s got to beat the rush hour traffic because Sully’s got a date with ka. MYSTERIOUS ENDING!

The final story, Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling, also takes place in 1999 as Bobby Garfield finally returns to the town of his youth. He still watches for the low men in yellow coats, even if he can’t quite remember the summer of 1960 as clearly as he once could. Bobby’s made his way back to town because he wants to revisit his childhood one last time, because his relationship with Lord of the Flies isn’t just over yet, and because all things serve the beam.

As a whole, Hearts in Atlantis is Stephen King’s story of the 1960s and its aftermath. It has that clean, crude style King is known for: wordy as all hell, vulgar one moment, and profound the next. It’s tragic, heartwarming, and beautiful, and is exactly the sort of novel most people would never expect from Stephen King. Not horror by any stretch of the imagination, and with plenty of complex subtlety, Hearts in Atlantis is proof positive that there’s a lot more to Stephen King than probably even Stephen King believes.