So to make up for that grievous omission, I picked up this one that's been gathering dust for a couple of years.
As you can guess from the fact that the publisher is Hard Case Crime, this isn't a horror novel. There's no terrifying presences stalking the cast. There is a small amount of supernatural but it's on the side of our narrator.
Devin Jones is a college student whose girlfriend has just ditched him. he's working a summer job at the Joyland of the title. This is the early 70s and Joyland is a small theme park on the North Carolina coast. He hears about a murder that happened on the ghost train ride a few years earlier. It's rumoured that the ghost of the girl who was murdered appears to staff and occasional visitors to the ride.
Devin also meets the second love of his life whilst moping about the first. Other characters include the carnie psychic, a dying young boy, some lifelong friends and more carnie staff.
King takes his time with the storytelling. People who accuse him of bloat in his writing will likely hate this book. I've noticed that most of what people call bloat is his character and world building. This book is a character piece, a coming of age story with a slight murder mystery thrown in for good measure. By the end of the book he's built this insular world of Joyland so beautifully it's almost a surprise to realise you didn't work there yourself at some point.
The murder mystery isn't particularly mysterious. The cast is relatively small and the choices are limited. But that's not the point of this book. This is about the characters. If the chapter where young Mike visits Joyland doesn't fill your heart with a bittersweet joy, you don't have feelings. I was grinning and trying not to cry simultaneously at the evocation of the boy's experience at the park.
This may well be my favourite non-horror King book. Devin is a totally believable and relatable narrator, recounting his youth and how he got over his first true love ending rather cruelly. We feel for him and sympathise with his darkest moments and we're happy as Howie the Hound when he scores his victories.
My next King book will be a horror, but this is proof that King can write pretty much anything he sets his mind to.
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