asandwich

Let’s get this out of the way first, okay? I know the original title of the book is NOS4A2. However, here in the UK, the title was changed by the publisher to NOS4R2 to reflect the British pronunciation, so that’s what I’ll be using.

It’s like that old song, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, with the whole “potaito/potahto, tomaito/tomahto” thing, isn’t it? Except I’ve never in my whole life ever heard anyone pronounce the word “potato” as potahto. That’s just weird, frankly. It would have been so much better and much more credible if Fred and Ginger had used the word “Nosferatu” in that line instead.

Damn, I’d pay good money to hear that version. To the time machine!




NOS4R2 is, without a shadow of a doubt, Joe Hill’s bravest and most ambitious book so far. It’s also his longest. And certainly his most ‘Christmassy’. But the point I’m really trying to make is that there’s a sense of something going on here that’s much larger than the events of the novel itself. I will attempt to explain myself shortly - but first, let’s talk turkey (with all the trimmings).

Charles Talent Manx III loves children. He roams the country, searching for any child who needs to be saved from parents he deems ‘unfit’ for the job of parenthood. Those bad parents go off to the House of Sleep, where they’ll never be able to interfere in their child’s upbringing again. The children go for a ride in Charlie’s beautiful black 1938 Rolls Royce Wraith all the way to the magical world of Christmasland, where eternal fun and games await them and every day is Christmas Day.

Manx is also at least 116 years old, and attributes his long and healthy life to absorbing the souls of innocent children.

There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

Young Victoria McQueen is a girl with a knack for finding lost things. Like Manx, she has a psychic ability, a power to project her thoughts into reality - in her case a bridge that can transport her to places where she can always find what she’s looking for. Vic’s talent brings her to an early confrontation with Manx that changes the course of both of their lives for years to come, and eventually puts everyone she’s ever loved into mortal danger.

This book is absolutely loaded with interesting ideas. From the downright creep-out factor of the holly-jolly Christmas music heralding the arrival of evil and the totally sinister take on a Winter Wonderland theme park, to the way Vic’s first confrontation with Manx irrevocably changes the course of her life forever. Hill spends a sizeable portion of the book writing about the daily difficulties and stigma faced by those attempting to deal with the realities of mental health issues (I found Maggie’s story particularly heart-wrenching), and I don’t actually think he does all too bad a job at pulling it off, to be fair. There’s also a sizeable chunk of geekery, as well as Hill’s trademark humour and, of course, the obligatory Keith Richards reference. Cute. (I mean the reference, not Keith Richards - who, let’s face it, is starting to look like the cover of the Necronomicon from The Evil Dead.)

If you held a gun to my head and asked me which of Joe Hill’s novels I thought was the best, I’d ask you why you needed to point a gun at me to ask me such a trivial question. Then I’d tell you that I think my favourite up to now was this one.

Hang on….

Yep. This one. *nods*


BUT. Remember earlier, when I said I thought this novel represented something larger than the events of the story? Here’s the thing: not only are there references to Hill’s other books in NOS4R2 (including the town of Lovecraft from Locke & Key!), effectively tying this into a broader fictional universe - but wait! There’s more! Because Mr. Hill ‘casually’ slips in a few references to old daddy King’s universe as well.

Bomb. Dropped.

My mouth was open; eyes all wide and bulgey; all this grey goo was leaking out of my ears…

...alright, maybe not the last one, but colour me surprised!

What does this mean? Well, I think this is pretty significant, in a way.

I mean, by formally acknowledging that Joe Hill’s and Stephen King’s novels all exist in the same universe, it tends to suggest that once S.K. decides to write his last line, throw his macbook in the bin and retire to a nice quiet tower in another dimension somewhere, then Mr. Hill will take over the legacy.

And you know what? I’m not worried in the slightest. Hill has proven himself to be a capable writer up to this point. Whether he ever manages to reach the great heights of his father’s best is pretty irrelevant right now, but there’s plenty of time, and he’s off to no bad start.