Teenager Charlie must journey to another world in this transporting tale with echoes of HP Lovecraft and The Wizard of Oz
Writing through multiple lockdowns … Stephen King.nce upon a time there was a boy called Charlie. His mother died in a terrible accident when he was young, and his father turned to drink, but Charlie grew up to be a good, strong, clever young man. The sort who helps strangers in need – such as the misanthropic Mr Bowditch, who has an equally elderly dog and a crumbling property. Which, as this is anovel, sits on a tunnel leading to a mysterious world in need of saving from a horrifying evil.
King wrote Fairy Tale in the thick of the pandemic after, he writes, seeing a mental image of “a vast deserted city – deserted but alive … the empty streets, the haunted buildings, a gargoyle head lying overturned in the street … a huge, sprawling palace with glass towers so high their tips pierced the clouds”. These images, he says, “released the story I wanted to tell” – although it takes him a long time to get there.
When Charlie eventually makes his way into the other world, he finds it peopled by men and women whose faces are grey and disfigured, their features almost blurred out of existence. There are talking horses and goose girls and intelligent crickets, but there is something malign at the centre, and Charlie must face it if he wants to get back to his dad. “Did I want to be the prince in this dark fairy tale? I did not. What I wanted was to get my dog and go home.
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