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CELL By Stephen King
It’s refreshing to know that someone in this world hates cellular phones as much as I do. Clayton Riddell is on top of the world. He just landed his first big break into comics: a graphic novel deal with a major company that will ensure his financial security for years to come. While waiting to buy an ice cream cone behind a woman on her cell phone, Clay idly notes that what was once considered rude has become accepted behavior: i.e. talking on the phone while transacting business. Clay doesn’t own a cell phone, and very soon, he’ll be glad he doesn’t. That’s because very soon the world is going straight to hell. The Pulse is an odd signal transmitted through cell phones—all cell phones—at precisely the same moment. It effectively causes everyone using a cell to revert to their most basic, primitive behavior. Take the woman in front of Clay, who has just been handed her sundae:
“Maddy, you’re breaking up! I just wanted to tell you I got my hair done at that new…my hair? ... MY…” …The woman said something unintelligible to Maddy and flipped her cellphone closed with a practiced flip of the wrist. Clay had time to think how fucking expensive everything was in the city. Perhaps the woman in the power suit thought so too— that, at least, was his first surmise— because for a moment more she still did nothing, merely looked at the cup with its mound of ice cream and its sliding sauce as if she had never seen such a thing before. … He turned back toward the ice cream truck in time to see Power Suit Woman lunge through the serving window … The closed-off, well-bred, out-in-public look on her face … had been replaced by a convulsive snarl that shrank her eyes to slits and exposed both sets of teeth.
And so it goes. Clay suddenly finds himself trying to survive in a world that has become a living hell, as everyone talking on a cell phone at the time of The Pulse goes completely crazy, becoming a violent, bloodthirsty monster. Cell is dedicated to George Romero (Night of the Living Dead) and Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) and it’s not hard to see why. While King’s “phoners” aren’t Romero’s zombies (they’re not walking corpses), there’s a strong similarity. Cell was even hyped as King’s “zombie book”, and like most zombie films, the book is gory, but hardly scary. Clay Riddell, like Matheson’s Robert Neville in I Am Legend, soon finds himself the outcast in a society in which insanity has become the norm. Fans of King will find familiar elements here. Clay’s quest to get from Boston to Maine to discover what has become of his family is the focus of the story; this physical journey from point A to point B in a world no longer familiar is reminiscent of The Stand, The Dark Tower Series, and King’s short story The Mist. As in much of King’s work, shared dreams are used both as a means of communication between characters and as a foreshadowing device for terrible events to come. Unfortunately, there are also a few familiar elements that aren’t so great. For me, King is an author who has written some unquestionably brilliant work (The Stand, The Shawshank Redemption, The Dead Zone, ‘Salem’s Lot), but whose books often suffer from bad endings. Some of his books tend to hook me early, keep me interested right to the climax, and then let me down with a blah finish (It, Bag of Bones, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon). Too often there are no real answers to be found, and the reader is left wanting more (From a Buick 8). Cell’s ending isn’t terrible, but answers are in short supply, which some readers (including me), are bound to find disappointing. While Cell isn’t a great book, neither is it bad; I enjoyed it or I wouldn’t bother reviewing it. That being said, expect to be entertained rather than scared. It’s currently out in hardcover from Scribner.
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