ABOUT THIS BOOK: Although Scott Carey doesnât look any different, heâs been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesnât want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis.
In the small town of Castle Rock, the setting of many of Kingâs most iconic stories, Scott is engaged in a low gradeâbut escalatingâbattle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scottâs lawn. One of the women is friendly; the other, cold as ice. Both are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple, and the place is in trouble. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they faceâincluding his ownâhe tries to help. Unlikely alliances, the annual foot race, and the mystery of Scottâs affliction bring out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.
MY THOUGHTS: King has, in his own relaxed and enjoyable style, written an enigmatic medical mystery. No, there’s no beautiful nurses, but there is one elderly, retired physician, Doctor Bob Ellis, who initially believes that Scott Carey is playing some kind of prank on him. For Scott can stand on the good doc’s scale in his heaviest winter clothes with his pockets full of rocks and weigh the same as he does buck naked. But that’s not all . . . but then it never is with Mr King, is it?
This is not a horror story, so don’t be afeared that monsters are going to lure little kiddies down drains, or that evil clowns are going to pop out of them. This is a story that I read with a smile on my face, and finished with a tear in my eye.
ââââ.5
‘Everyone should have this, he thought, and perhaps, at the end, everyone does. Perhaps in their time of dying, everyone rises.’
‘He thought he had discovered one of life’s great truths (and one he could have done without): the only thing harder than saying goodbye to yourself, a pound at a time, was saying goodbye to your friends.’
THE AUTHOR: Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father’s family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen’s grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men’s magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale (“The Glass Floor”) to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men’s magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels
DISCLOSURE: I own my paperback copy of Elevation by Stephen King, published by Hodder. I purchased it during the initial stages of the New Zealand Covid-19 lockdown, but it has only just called to me to be read. I have this strange relationship with Mr King’s books. I buy them as soon as they are released, then place them on my bedside table where I see them first thing in the morning and last thing at night, where I smile at them and think of the joy of reading them, and occasionally trail my fingers lovingly across the covers, until one day they seem to say to me, ‘All right, just get on with it, will you!’ And I do.
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