11-22-63

A Novel

By: Stephen King

Narrated by: Craig Wasson

Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back?

In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King - who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer - takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

It begins with Jake Epping, a 35-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away: a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life - like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963 - turning on a dime.

Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession - to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world - of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading, eventually of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful - and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.

©2011 Stephen King. All Rights Reserved. (P)2011 Simon & Schuster, Inc

Very entertaining

I enjoyed this book very much. Good narration. Stephen king is one of the best story tellers! I love history so this one was even more entertaining to me.

Good story

If you like SK then you will enjoy this book. It's very typical King, slow at points and in love with the simple picture of life.

Highly recommend!

I LOVED this book, ending it is so bittersweet. Stephen King did not disappoint and the narration is amazing!

Great book!

Great book and a great narrator! Listened to it on a road trip and it made the time fly.

Performance was magnificent

The story kept me listening.

The writing imaginative. A workmanlike product but I wouldn't classify it as great literature.

I was curious never having read the author.

Main impression: It was fun. The performance was superlative, many accents well done.

Thrilling, one of a kind. wish there was more!

Amazing story and characters... to bad there are not many books like it with alternate history and time travel.

A perfect book in every respect.

I don't give out 5-star reviews without great consideration. This book earned it. It's huge. Trying to summarize what I like about it would be nearly impossible, but in a nutshell what made it great was that King took his time with it. It never felt rushed or forced and the story, while at times over-developed, was riveting.

And the narration? Top shelf. No wonder King picked Wasson. Aside from the clearly "on different days" nature of some of the book (you can hear Wasson's tone of voice change) he is a flawless narrator. I never got tired of his voice telling the story.

You need to partake in this book. Just do it.

Exciting

I really like how King made the past his own. I liked his interpretation of the past and the changes of the future. This book had slow moments but it was well paced. The narrator did a very good job and kept me entertained.

Great Book, Even Better than Most Stephen King

Many years ago, I was a follower of Stephen King. When he started getting into too much paranormal and too much unusual violence, I stopped reading his books. Recently, however, I have returned to Stephen King and I found this is one of his best books ever. I really enjoyed the main character as he moved in and out of the past and present. I found myself remembering some of the historical references related to JFK's assassination. In some ways, it addresses the question of should we try to change the past, even if we can? This book is laid out in a totally believable manner, making you think that time travel might be possible. It also delves into the question of whether we ever would have the right to change the past, even if we had the opportunity. The resolution between the characters is handled in a really satisfactory way, like icing on the cake. I highly recommend this book to everyone, regardless of whether they are prior King fans and certainly recommend it to anyone who likes to read about what America was like when Kennedy was assassinated.

Stephen King story is his best work

My hats of
to the narrator, he did a great job telling the story. Peace