This applies to everyone: his neighbors and friends, criminals wanted by the federal government, and ruthless murderers. No matter what, when Jamie asks the ghosts he meets a direct question, they must tell the truth. Mostly, I think this book is worth reading for one element of world-building, one rule that forms the central urgency of this text within the Stephen King canon and his political evolution. Later is definitely worth reading, especially because it will take you five seconds and there is something still wonder-inspiring about the lived experience of being a contemporary of such an impactful storyteller-of being able to walk through the aisles of the grocery store and pick up a new offering from a legend who works alongside us in this moment of space-time.
There is an attention to child-like detail that rewards a reading practice similar to much quieter, slice of life books, a high-speed revealing of details reminiscent of a Dashiell Hammett tale, and a detached speculative awe we’ve come to associate with King’s younger protagonists. This self conscious refrain ( “I think this is a horror story”) settles in as a kind of mantra, a redirecting of the reader’s attention as the book slides between genres. Later-and not much later-I found out it was more like the stuff that comes out of the cat’s ass. “My name is Jamie Conklin, and once upon a time I drew a Thanksgiving turkey that I thought was the absolute cat’s ass. King begins with a deep breath, and then: The book starts with an apology, a justification for the repeated use of the word later.
The narrator version of Jamie is in his mid-twenties, looking back on a couple of decades of growing into this strange responsibility. Jamie’s power only extends for a limited amount of time after a person dies, and, for most of the book, the ins and outs of his ability is outside his scope of understanding. The book is a first-person narrative by Jamie Conkin, a child born with an ability to see and communicate with the dead.
King’s latest (aptly titled Later) is a compelling, genre-mash and in many ways, one of King’s most honest stories. Now, it’s 2021 and I’m an adult who does my own grocery shopping and I see a new paperback on a display at Costco and I throw it into my cart before any food. Manufactured, destroyable dread was the invisible thread connecting the balloon to the toy block to the yellow background. She spun my future with fabric squares-painstakingly arranged for comfort-and whatever textures might be taken from the echoes of chants and shaking chains on a fictional death row. When she was pregnant with me, my mom distracted herself with two equally consuming tasks: stitching future-me a small quilt (despite very little knowledge or skill related to sewing) and reading the serial installments of The Green Mile, published between March and August of 1996. I started absorbing Stephen King before I was born.
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