Elevation discussion

I'd much rather blame this website that my own incompetence, but somewhere along the line my second book review was lost. I remember posting, writing about how I much preferred Cujo to Pet Semetary, how Donna and her husband have their own issues and that actually drives the main plot forward too, how it was a complete bombshell that Tad doesn't make it to the end of the book, and that those little bits of King's writing are things I wish to emulate.

But no. That review is gone. So, here I am, posting out of order and about my third book, Elevation, by Stephen King.

Initially, I said I was going to read The Shining as my third book, but when I finished my second book (which I most certainly DID finish) and drove to the library to check out my third, they were in the midst of a massive remodel and it was unlikely I would receive the book anytime soon.

So I pulled a relatively new looking King book off of the shelf, called it good, and that was how I started reading Elevation.

Elevation is a story about a man named Scott, who is losing weight at an astounding pace without getting physically smaller. Scott, who initially weighed around 250 pounds, calculates that he'll have only a few months before the scale reads 0, and decides to make the most of the rest of his life. In the end, he attaches himself to a firework and floats up into the atmosphere, his final moments ending with a literal and figurative bang. Interestingly, the reason behind Scott's sudden weight loss is never explained. No chapter is dedicated to figuring out why this is happening, no paragraph full of big science words is in the entire book. The deliberate non-explanation for Scott's condition drives the story forward and makes it more compelling--while what's happening to Scott is completely unfathomable, the choices he makes in his final months are.

King avoids explaining Scott's condition, but also grounds the story by using modern references. When talking about why the town doesn't like the married lesbian couple who recently moved in, Scott's friend Mike says, "[t]he county went for Trump three-to-one in '16 and they think our stonebrain governor walks on water" (43). Deliberately putting these references in makes the story that much better--I, for one, can imagine these events happening in our real world. There are conservative Republican towns in the United States, and while they may not have floating men, they are definitely biased against LGBTQ+ individuals.

Finally, King uses compelling side-characters to drive his story forward. The entire novel is from the point of view of Scott, but the very first scene has him interacting with Doctor Bob, his retired confidant. The way Scott interacts with those around him--from the lesbian couple who moved into the house next door to the judgmental men in the small sweet shop who nearly knock Scott's teeth out when he suggests that they don't judge the women for who they love--shows something about himself in the process. In the few months he has left to live, Scott does a complete 180 in his personality. He opens up to the women next door, runs his first professional 12k, and discovers that life is a little bit more that who we love and how we act--all thanks to the people he interacts with.