What I found in Joyland was not what I expected. From the cover tag line "Who dares enter the Funhouse of Fear?" I was hoping at least for a deformed monster.
No luck.
Joyland is a "bittersweet comic-of-age novel", a nostalgic reminiscence of a College student living in a seaside town over the summer. Renting a room at a boarding house, he pines away for his girlfriend who has moved on. He gets a job working at the local amusement park doing everything from running rides to wearing the mascot costume and enjoys the lifestyle and community of it. There are carny folk with interesting stories and odd carny lingo, and a spooky legend of a young girl murdered years ago in the (now supposedly haunted) funhouse. Walking the beach to work, he befriends a woman and her young son, who suffers from muscular dystrophy. When the park shuts down for the winter, he stays on to do maintenance.
This is the Stand By Me / Shawshank Redemption style of King. It's alright, but not too exciting to me. If I knew it was a sentimental look back to a young man's summer, I might not have read it. Plenty of reviewers loved this book, but for me it was just OK. The ghost story grows and is resolved through amateur detective work with his friends, and there is a little romance on the side. He works a lot of hours, and has a special day at the fair with the young son. It's a look at growing up and growing old. Well written, but not my favourite. I prefer my funhouses' a little darker (like the great movie Carny starring Jodie Foster and Gary Busey) and a little scarier (like The Funhouse by Owen West). There is a grand finale on a runaway ferris wheel in a lightning storm, so it had it's moments.
Joyland was published by Hard Case Crime, an imprint that releases and restores older pulp and crime novels, featuring a great original painting by Glen Orbik on the cover. Joyland was nominated for the 2014 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. Hard Case previously released his paperback novel The Colorado Kid.
I kept waiting for it to kick in, but for me it was like watching the waves roll up onto the beach, entertaining but nothing I would hang on to.
Read my other reviews of Stephen King:
2014 / Tradeback / 283 pages.
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