Mike Noonan, the first-person narrator of "Bag of Bones," is a best-selling author devastated by the sudden death of his wife, Jo. Now, four years later, Mike's grief has evolved into a formidable case of writer's block: He can't even sit at his word processor without being overcome by nausea and nerves, and the frustration only adds to his depression: . . . "without my wife and my work, I was a superfluous man living alone in a big house that was all paid for, doing nothing but the newspaper crossword over lunch."
Hoping a change of scenery will calm his anxieties and jump start his creativity, Mike moves into his summer getaway home, a rural Maine lakeside cabin nicknamed Sara Laughs. But the tranquillity Mike yearns for is not to be had: Sara Laughs turns out to be crawling with ghosts - no surprise there, since "Bag of Bones" was written by Stephen King, the world's most popular author of horror fiction.Those ghosts initially harass Mike in harmless, familiar ways: eerie noises in the night, sudden changes in room temperature, objects (such as refrigerator magnets) that move when you're not looking. But they don't stay harmless for long. Mike determines that one of the spirits belongs to his late wife. But there are other, less benign presences hanging around, too, and they seem to want something of Mike himself.
What, exactly, turns out to be pretty horrific. But this story isn't King's usual bag of tricks: With this novel, the scarily prolific author is reaching out to readers who normally turn their noses up at his work. The dust jacket bills "Bag of Bones" as "a haunted love story," a phrase the author came up with himself, and it's an accurate description: Daphne Du Maurier's "Rebecca" is a heavy (and attributed) influence.
So is, believe it or not, Herman Melville's "Bartleby." Even the book's title is a literary reference: At one point, Mike quotes English novelist Thomas Hardy: "Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there, the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones."
It's a telling sign that before the novel is done, an actual bag of bones comes into play: Whatever high-minded aspirations may be at play, King remains a literal-minded kind of guy. And longtime King fans need not worry, since "Bag of Bones" has the same unstoppable narrative momentum and earthy characterizations that have made this author the most successful writer of his generation.
Still, it's gratifying to know that King, 51, refuses to coast. It's fascinating to see him tackle one of fiction's hoariest genres, the ghost story. In these days of serial killers and 12-year-old murderers, the idea of chain-rattling spooks in the night seems quaint.
With the exception of "The Stand," King's best novels have always been his shortest. "Bag of Bones," like most of his recent books, suffers from a case of bloat, which occasionally slows its thundering pace. But the novel is rich in invention and often quite surprising: Every 100 pages or so, it races off in an unexpected direction. Near the end, a weary Mike tells us "I've lost my taste for spooks. . . . I've put down my scrivener's pen." But "Bag of Bones" makes clear this should not be interpreted as an autobiographical statement: There's plenty of fertile ground left in King's wondrously dark imagination.