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Cargando... The Outsider: A Novel (2018 original; edición 2018)por Stephen King (Autor)
Información de la obraThe Outsider por Stephen King (2018)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. As a devoted Stephen King fan, I read - maybe I should say, devoured, this novel in three days as soon as I received it. I have to hand it to Mr King, the man can certainly tell stories! This one was a page turner, although to be fair, his books usually are. The story was very well told as only he can tell it. Briefly, Terry Maitland is a coach of prepubescent boys, one of whom is found murdered, grossly and very viciously. Terry is arrested because his DNA and other factors lead the police to believe they have found their killer. However as it turns out, Terry also has a verifiable alibi including witnesses and even a tv interview. The pace is heightened when unexpected things occur and new information is sought. I have read so many King novels and short stories that I am used to his style and prose. Every now and then he gives us little surprises and The Outsider contains several. If you have read some of his later novels, you will get the inside joke. The only complaint with the book and why I didn't give it 5 stars was because I felt the concluding chapters bogged down somewhat and didn't really explain everything well, In my honest opinion, I like that Uncle Steve is with it and makes references to many of our tech devices, social media and other items that did not even exist five or ten years ago. A nice touch to bring the story into 2018. I was pleased to pick up this book as a charity shop bargain as I wouldn't have paid full price for it, having been too disappointed by other recent novels by King. It started well with a horrifying account of the discovery of a young boy, brutally murdered, and the hasty decision by the local police to arrest a popular member of the town, Terry Maitland, an English teacher and the coach for the local children's baseball teams. A number of witnesses apparently saw Maitland either abduct the boy or walk around later with blood on him etc, apparently not bothered who saw him. And as subsequent interviews proceed, more evidence against Coach T, as he is also known, is found. Yet he has a cast-iron alibi placing him in another town at the time of the abduction, attending a literary conference. That town is too far away for him to have been able to return in time to be seen subsequently as claimed. In fact, he was filmed by a public broadcast channel at the conference, and in the company of other English teachers at his school who all speak in his favour. So far, so intriguing. The book follows several viewpoints. A major one is the detective, Ralph, who begins to have doubts early on as to whether they have made a big mistake. Despite this, the wheels grind on, and subsequent media and public reaction becomes rabidly hostile towards a man we are almost certain is innocent, with tragedy to follow. For about half of this long book, all was well. It seemed that this was a straight crime novel, as were the first two 'Finders Keepers' books which had disappointed me earlier, but a lot better than those. And then - it derailed. I had given up with the FK series because I didn't like the continuing characters, and thought the first was flawed on a number of levels. The second would have been acceptable if the role that was mid-way assigned to the Finders Keepers people had instead been undertaken by the sympathetic teacher: I didn't think it needed to be a FK book at all. And reading the end of book 2, which telegraphed the introduction of the supernatural for book 3, I decided not to bother. So I had a sinking feeling when it became obvious with the present novel that the explanation was starting to develop along those lines. I have enjoyed supernatural stories by King, especially early ones such as 'The Shining', but it seemed out of place here in what had the appearance of a straight crime novel. And it could have continued as such - I was already anticipating (wrongly) that the crime scene evidence had been tampered with, and there is a character with an agenda against Ralph who would've been in a position to do just that, in order to discredit him. That person could have wanted the wrongful arrest to proceed to the arraignment in court, to ensure that Ralph's downfall was as public and damaging as possible. Terry's fate could have proceeded unaltered. But if the character in the crowd: The other problem I had with this book is the lack of editing. I had noticed from 'IT' onwards that King's books became more bloated, and presumed that he was now too big a name for editors to have the courage to edit him. There is so much dead wood as the story progresses, with people sitting around chatting and telling each other what they know, catching up on what the reader already knows because it has been shown in one character's viewpoint previously. And the inclusion of a character from the Finders Keepers series who then played a major role was the final straw for me. So all in all, I can only rate this as an OK 2 stars, mainly achieving that rating because of the tense beginning.
At nearly 600 pages, “The Outsider” isn’t exactly a streamlined thriller. Yet, it doesn’t feel bloated or self-indulgent. Anderson, Maitland and the supporting cast are so deftly drawn, their predicaments so fraught with menace, that the momentum of the narrative builds steadily and keeps the pages turning. In the background is the Outsider, a stranger in town, orchestrating tragedies seemingly on a whim. King cleverly keeps him at a distance for most of the book, letting his menace build by increments. By the time Anderson’s search for the truth leads to an abandoned mine in the desert, readers are unlikely to be able to put “The Outsider” aside for even a moment....Ultimately, “The Outsider” is about belief, the conscious choice to acknowledge that the universe is a stranger place than most people think it is. The Outsider is a wily opponent, who can survive because few are able to recognize him for what he is. They fail to protect themselves from his very real malice and destructiveness. What would it feel like to be so perfectly, completely implicated in the worst crime to ever befall a small town, and have perfectly, completely exonerating evidence you weren’t there? That’s the biggest question King explores in “The Outsider” as small-town cops and prosecutors are asked to believe the impossible — and find the impossible as well. Mob mentality, pedophilia, horrific violence — King never shies away from tough topics. As with most of King’s work, “The Outsider” is at its heart an exploration of good and evil; except this time, skepticism blurs the lines between the two. Terry Maitland is by all accounts a solid family man, a beloved Little League coach, and, quite suddenly, the main suspect in the horrific mutilation and murder of a young boy. The physical evidence and eyewitness testimony against him are incontrovertible, though completely at odds with his reputation as a husband and father who for years has been a pillar of his insular Flint City, Okla., community....No book is perfect, but Stephen King is reliably closer than most. He has always excelled at writing about real people tested by unreal situations, whether it’s told in the unbroken narrative of Dolores Claiborne or via the mental lockboxes of Doctor Sleep. With “The Outsider,” if you can accept that a contemporary man in his late 40s recalls quoting “Our Gang” with his kid brother instead of the Fonz or even Pee-wee Herman, you’re in for one hell of a ride. More than 50 novels published, and he’s still adding new influences to his work. I can think of a great many literary writers who are far lazier about their range of inspirations and interests. This expansiveness allows King to highlight the idea that whether we’re talking about Mexico or Maine, Oklahoma or Texas, people the world over tell certain stories for reasons that feel much the same: to understand the mysteries of our universe, the improbable and inexplicable.... Here’s to mutant rats in the basement and Mexican myths; here’s to the strange and to Stephen King. Still inspiring. There’s plenty of shadowy, wormy supernatural goings-on in Stephen King’s new novel The Outsider. Yet the most unsettling stuff — that which will leave you uncomfortable when you sit and devour this first-rate read — probes the monstrous side of human nature....How does a place deal when the very best of them does the very worst thing imaginable? How does that man’s family and the family of the deceased boy go on living? And what of the cops who are faced with what seems like an impossible situation? The author plumbs to the gloomy depths with his cast before letting off the gas and giving them — and the reader — some needed hope....In King’s hands, real darkness is just as pervasive as the supernatural. Pertenece a las seriesHolly Gibney (4)
El mal puede tener muchas caras... Incluso podría tener la tuya. Un niño de once años ha sido brutalmente violado y asesinado. Todas las pruebas apuntan a uno de los ciudadanos más queridos de Flint City: Terry Maitland, entrenador en la liga infantil, profesor de literatura, marido ejemplar y padre de dos niñas. El detective Ralph Anderson ordena su detención. Maitland tiene una coartada firme que demuestra que estuvo en otra ciudad cuando se cometió el crimen, pero las pruebas de ADN encontradas en el lugar de los hechos confirman que es culpable. Ante la justicia y la opinión pública Terry Maitland es un asesino y el caso está resuelto. Pero el detective Anderson no está satisfecho. Maitland parece un buen tipo, un ciudadano ejemplar, ¿acaso tiene dos caras? Y ¿cómo es posible que estuviera en dos sitios a la vez? La respuesta, como no podría ser de otra forma saliendo de la pluma de Stephen King, te hará desear no haber preguntado. Ahora ta No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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The Outsider is not the shocking horror that smacks one in the face with gore, not that I think that is the author's standard way, but it eases under one's skin and psyche, playing and teasing with the mind. Not fantastical in a way that is too out of reach, the Outsider toys with the idea that there are shapeshifters among us, persons, or rather beings, that slip into one's body, taking them over from the inside to do their bidding while their outside appearance remains the same. Oh, it was fun to read this book.
The Outsider will leave you thinking, wondering, and wishing for more. I believe there is a movie, perhaps a series, but if you are a reader and willing to open your mind to a bit of psychological mystery about the spirituality of one's inner self - you must read The Outsider. ( )