{"id":4008,"date":"2013-06-27T19:37:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T00:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4008"},"modified":"2013-06-27T15:40:02","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T20:40:02","slug":"critic-at-large-joyland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4008","title":{"rendered":"Critic at Large: Joyland"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve enjoyed Stephen King\u2019s books since I was a kid, but I\u2019m the first to recognize his penchant for overwriting. He sometimes delves into a character\u2019s head for several pages when a few paragraphs would do. That\u2019s why Joyland<\/em> <\/a>is such a pleasant surprise. It\u2019s an economical thriller that is thoroughly engaging but doesn\u2019t overstay its welcome. It tells the story of Devon Jones, a lovelorn college student coming of age in the early 1970s who takes a summer job at Joyland, a struggling amusement park in North Carolina. This being a King novel, there are plenty of eccentric characters, a restless ghost, and a romance, all of it infused with a bittersweet nostalgia.<\/p>\n

Joyland<\/em> doesn\u2019t break any new narrative ground. It\u2019s marketed as a pulpy murder mystery, but King\u2019s prose is graceful and understated. For a beach read (it\u2019s not available as an e-book), it\u2019s surprisingly thoughtful. I read it in just a few hours, but the story still lingers in my thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve enjoyed Stephen King\u2019s books since I was a kid, but I\u2019m the first to recognize his penchant for overwriting. He sometimes delves into a character\u2019s head for several pages when a few paragraphs would do. That\u2019s why Joyland is such a pleasant surprise. It\u2019s an economical thriller that is thoroughly engaging but doesn\u2019t overstay […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-22-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-12E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4009,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4008\/revisions\/4009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}